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EASY LESSONS 

IN 

PSYCHOANALYSIS 



by 

ANDRE TRIDON 

Author of "Psychoanalysis, Its History, Theory and Practice'''' 

"Psychoanalysis and Behaviour ," "Psychoanalysis, 

Sleep and Dreams" etc. 

Member of the Society of Forensic Medicine of New York and 

of the International Association for Individual 

Psychology of Vienna, Austria. 




BRENTANO'S 

Publishers New York 



- 






Copyright, 1921, by 
BRENTANO'S 

All Rights Reserved 



to replace lost 

, 2 : 929 



PRINTED IN UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



LC Control Number 




tmp96 025772 



This book is respectfully 

dedicated to 

Dr. ALFRED ADLER 

of Vienna, Austria 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

PACK 

Introduction 

Lesson I. The Psychoanalytic Viewpoint . i 

Lesson II. Dreams and Their Meaning . . 10 

Lesson III. The Mind and the Brain ... 19 

Lesson IV. The Human Machine, Its Motor 

and Its Brake 26 

Lesson V. The Conscious and the Uncon- 
scious . . . 34 

Lesson VI. Complexes and Education ... 45 

Lesson VII. The Hereditary Taint ... 57 

Lesson VIII. The Neurosis 68 

Lesson IX. The Flight from Reality and the 

Regression 75 

Lesson X. Pen Pictures of Neurotics ... 86 

Lesson XI. Genius and Neurosis .... 101 

Lesson XII. Sex and Ego 107 

Lesson XIII. The Psychoanalytic Treatment 119 

Lesson XIV. A Psychoanalytic Who's Who 129 



Introduction 

This is essentially a primer of psychoanalysis. 
It aims at presenting in simple language the es- 
sentials of a science which has reached a high 
degree of development and accuracy, but which 
like every other science, has been evolving and 
has not reached, nor will ever reach, the end of 
its evolution. 

As I will explain in the last chapter of this 
book, there have been several tendencies mani- 
festing themselves in psychoanalysis. 

Freudians, Jungians and Adlerians do not al- 
ways agree on minor points, altho they all agree 
as to the psychoanalytic viewpoint. 

Siding with any one group is futile and 
causes one to exclude priceless material. The 
three tendencies can easily be combined. If to 
Freud's, Jung's and Adler's hypothesis we add 
Kempf 's theory of the personality and clarify the 



INTRODUCTION 

mysteries of the unconscious by adopting Crile's 
electrical view of life, we finally have a body of 
doctrine based on solid scientific ground. 

Many psychoanalysts, following the line of 
least effort, have refused to deviate from the 
path blazed by Freud, and they have created 
among laymen the impression that the words 
freudian and psychoanalytic were interchange- 
able terms. This is the more regrettable as some 
of the great pioneer's early and unavoidable ex- 
aggerations, especially in regard to sexuality, 
have appeared unacceptable to many scientists, 
for, as Jung wrote me once, "they only suit a 
certain kind of mentality. ,, 

A purely "freudian" analysis stands in the 
same relation to modern analysis as the Half 
Moon stands to the Leviathan. The great liner 
carries out Fulton's principle that a ship generat- 
ing her own power is superior to one relying on 
fickle winds, but modern ship builders, while re- 
vering Fulton's memory, do not turn to his notes 
for help when designing sea racers. 

The following books are indispensable to stu- 



INTRODUCTION 

dents who wish to acquaint themselves more 
closely with the various schools of psychoanalysis 
and with the physiological and physical research 
work which has enabled psychoanalysis to make 
gigantic strides in recent years in the conquest 
of neurotic ailments. 

A. Adler. — The Neurotic Constitution. Moffat 
Yard. 

W. B. Cannon. — Bodily Changes in Pain, Hun- 
ger, Fear and Rage. Appleton. 

S. Freud. — Introduction to Psychoanalysis. 
Boni and Liveright. 

S. Freud. — Dream Psychology. McCann. 

E. S. Jelliffe. — The Technique of Psycho- 
analysis. Nervous and Mental Disease Mono- 
graph Series. 

C. J. Jung. — Analytical Psychology. Moffat 
Yard. 

E. J. Kempf. — The Autonomic Functions and 
the Personality. Nervous and Mental Disease 
Monograph Series. 

J. Loeb. — Forced Movements, Tropisms and 
Animal Conduct. Lippincott. 



INTRODUCTION 

A. Tridon. — Psychoanalysis, its History, The- 
ory and Practice. Huebsch. 

A. Tridon. — Psychoanalysis and Behavior. 
Knopf. 

A. Tridon. — Psychoanalysis, Sleep and 
Dreams. Knopf. 

A. Tridon.— Psychoanalysis and Love. Bren- 
tano. 

October 15, 1921. 

121 Madison Avenue, 

New. York City. 



EASY LESSONS IN 
PSYCHOANALYSIS 



EASY LESSONS IN 
PSYCHOANALYSIS 

LESSON I 
The Psychoanalytic Viewpoint 

"I must have said it unconsciously." "I must 
have done it unconsciously." This is usually 
your lame excuse for doing or saying things 
which were absolutely out of keeping with a cer- 
tain situation. And after offering that explana- 
tion you feel you should not be held to account 
for some curious mistakes you made. 

But the psychoanalyst will not let you go as 
easily as that. If John, while making love to 
Ethel, should call her Evelyn, Ethel, the psycho- 
analyst says, would be perfectly justified in re- 
senting the part Evelyn plays in John's thoughts. 
Maybe John does not actually love Evelyn, but 



2 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

Evelyn was "on his mind" when he made that 
"incomprehensible mistake." 

There are no "mistakes," the psychoanalyst 
says. The things that "escape" us are the things 
we unconsciously wish to say. And, on the other 
hand, the things we cannot say, because appar- 
ently we have "forgotten" them, or which we 
vainly try to say, as when we are stammering, 
are things we do not wish to say. 

It is distressing, is it not? For years I laughed 
at the theory. Now that I have mastered it, how- 
ever, its application stares me in the face every 
day of my life. 

A few months ago I was invited to a dinner 
at which I was to meet stodgy,, uninteresting 
folks, strong on conventionalities. I entered the 
date in my engagement book for the 25th and on 
the morning of the 25th was asked over the 
'phone what had kept me from the dinner the 
night before. I had to humiliate myself before 
my hostess and apologize for that rude breach 
of etiquette. How could I have made such a mis- 
take about the date? 



PSYCHOANALYTIC VIEWPOINT 3 

I had made that mistake because, while I really 
intended to go to that dinner, something in me 
held me back and did not wish to go. 

A few weeks ago my wife and I stood per- 
plexed in front of a house where we had gone 
at about 10 o'clock in the evening, all dressed 
up for a very gay party, quite the opposite of the 
one I missed. Our hosts were out and the only 
thing for us to do was to smile and go home, for 
we had come 24 hours too soon. "Our uncon- 
scious couldn't wait" and had "made a mistake" 
which would have been flattering to our hosts. 

How easily we forget to pay our bills ! How 
hard it is for us to forget what others owe us ! 

This is, roughly speaking, the import of the 
new science, psychoanalysis, the psychology of 
the wish. There are many systems of psychol- 
ogy, some of them very ingenious indeed, but 
their appeal is slight, except to sentimental schol- 
ars who make a living by teaching them. 

Platonism, Bergsonism or Hegelism are inter- 
esting hypotheses, but neither a teacher nor a 
banker nor a physician could apply them in the 






4 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

conduct of their business or profession. And 
the world is tired of theories which cannot be put 
into practice in the daily life of the average man. 

When Freud,, on the other hand, after mak- 
ing a slow, painstaking study of thousands of 
dreams and after noting carefully the striking 
relationship existing between the dreams of neu- 
rotics and their ailments, formulated his wish 
fulfilment theory, the world acquired at last a 
decidedly practical system of psychological re- 
search. 

An inner force or urge, which Freud calls the 
libido, is constantly striving to express itself thru 
overt acts. The primitive brute which is in us 
is trving to act as freely as the caveman of ten 
thousand years ago did before civilisation placed 
a restraint upon human actions. If that force can- 
not e? ress itself normally, it will express itself 
abnormally. If steam in a boiler does not find 
a natural outlet thru a safety valve, the pressure 
thus generated will explode the boiler and thereby 
create an unnatural outlet. 

When the desire for normal sexual gratifica- 



PSYCHOANALYTIC VIEWPOINT 5 

tion,, for instance, has been repressed long 
enough, it attains its end in a way which is not ex- 
actly abnormal but which is not absolutely natu- 
ral either, thru erotic dreams. 

Repressed cravings seeking gratification are 
the cause of every nervous disturbance, be it ap- 
parently mental or apparently physical or both 
mental and physical. , 

In order to understand clearly morbid psycho- 
logical phenomena translating themselves at 
times into physical symptoms, we must first de- 
termine, thru many tests, what are the repressed 
cravings responsible for them. 

When we find that out we can then gradually 
help the neurotic to see the actual motives fyack 
iof his faulty actions, the unconscious reasons for 
his morbid states or his morbid behavior. 

We can also,, in the great majority oftq^ses, 
suggest an acceptable safety valve for the pent- 
up force which, if repressed any longer, would 
probably disrupt the human boiler. 

Without going into any more details of that 
procedure, we may point out several simple and 



6 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

practical applications of the analytic point of 
view in every-day psychology. 

If a teacher notices, for instance, that a child 
always forgets certain things, and if he remem- 
bers that that child forgets them because he un- 
consciously wishes to forget them, he may make 
those reasons clear to the child; after which the 
child can watch himself and stop forgetting. 

If a banker notices that one of his tellers al- 
ways makes a certain class of mistakes, he may, 
according to the unconscious wish those mistakes 
indicate, either dismiss the clerk as unreliable or 
treat him as an unconsciously disturbed employee 
and help him to become efficient. 

If a physician convinces himself that a certain 
nervous disorder is an asset to his patient, he may 
gradually open the patient's eyes to that abnormal 
wish fulfillment and make him healthy. 

In other words, everything has a reason, even 
if at times the reason is an unconscious, absurd 
one; finding out the reasons for every form of 
human behavior is the only practical way of know- 
ing ourselves and others.. 



Mhiiriir ' jT -■ --*--■ 



PSYCHOANALYTIC VIEWPOINT 7 

The observations of psychoanalysis have re- 
stricted considerably the sphere of influence of 
heredity, a superstitious belief in which has 
wrecked many minds. Psychoanalysis has also 
discarded the theory that a shock is responsible 
for nervous disturbances. It has proved that neu- 
rotic conduct is not the result of an accident any 
more than it is due to a mysterious something we 
have inherited,, but is an attitude adopted for ab- 
surd reasons, after thousands of small incidents 
of our life have forced us to deviate from the nor- 
mal path. 

By tracing many abnormalities in the adult to 
repressions that took place in infancy and child- 
hood, psychoanalysis throws a flood of light upon 
the development of the child's soul. It has re- 
vealed to us that the attitude of parents to chil- 
dren is directly responsible for the children's hap- 
piness or unhappiness, for their normality or ab- 
normality in after life. It has proved that the 
most poisonous element in life is fear and hence 
that fear should be eliminated entirely from our 
educational system. 

/ 



1 



8 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

Psychoanalysis has thousands of practical ap- 
plications not only to human conduct and behavior 
but to the interpretation of the products of the 
human mind. It explains all the arts and all hu- 
man progress as an attempted gratification of the 
race's desires and dreams. The discontented who 
cannot delight in the noises, colors and shapes of 
an ugly world have given us beautiful music, 
paintings and statues. Obsessed by a desire to 
escape the limitations of human physiology, which 
give rise to many dreams of flying, man has ac- 
quired wings and now flies. 

Psychoanalysis will some day reform our penal 
system entirely and substitute treatment of of- 
fenders for punishment. It has shown that 
prison delusions (for instance, of the Peter 
Ibbetson type) affect men sentenced to long terms, 
defeat absolutely the aim of legislators and pre- 
clude the possibility of the prisoner's reforming. 
After 2000 years, psychology has finally real- 
/ ized the truth of Socrates' motto: "Know thy- 
\ self." Therein resides all wisdom; there begins 
the road to normal, healthy life. Socrates un- 



l»'< i ' li im it h I n i V i ii 



PSYCHOANALYTIC VIEWPOINT 9 

fortunately did not make his method sufficiently 
clear or practical. Psychoanalysts have improved 
upon it and have devised ways and means where- 
by a wonderful apparatus for self study has been 
placed in every one's hands* 



A 



LESSON II 

Dreams and Their Meaning 

I stated in the first lesson that the psychoana- 
lytic point of view was arrived at from a study of 
dreams and of the relationship of a neurotic's 
dreams to his ailment. 

We must therefore master the psychoanalytic 
theory of dreams before proceeding any further. 

Mankind has always suspected that dreams had 
a meaning, but it has also either exaggerated or 
minimized that meaning. It considers dreams 
either as foolish visions or as solemn warnings 
from the gods. They are neither. They are very 
important productions of the human mind and in 
fifty years from now there will not be a physician 
who, even when treating purely physical ailments, 
will not make it his business to inquire about his 
patient's dreams. 

The statement made by the Viennese physician,, 

10 



DREAMS AND THEIR MEANING n 

Freud, some forty years ago, that we always do 
in our dreams the things which we wanted to do 
but could not do in our waking life, is being ac- 
cepted by more and more scientists as an indis- 
putable fact. 

I know how indignant certain readers will feel 
when reading this. Maybe a fond mother 
dreamed that her beloved child was dead. An- 
other dreamer may have fallen off a high tower 
and another may have courted in his dreams a girl 
who in reality is totally unattractive to him, and 
yet I maintain that such examples as these do 
not in the least invalidate the theory of wish ful- 
fillment. 

Another statement psychoanalysis makes is 
that the dream is the guardian, not the disturber, 
of our sleep, and that there never has been or can 
be dreamless sleep, unless it be sleep induced by 
narcotics, which is not sleep but "a mild form of 
death." We dream all night, from the minute 
we close our eyes to the time when we open them 
again and those who imagine that they never 



12 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

dream are people who simply forget all their 
dreams. 

Our thinking during our sleeping hours is 
pretty much like our thinking during our waking 
states, with one difference, however. We visual- 
ize all our thoughts during our sleep. All our 
dreams are visions, which now and then include 
some sensation of taste, smell, or hearing, but the 
vision is the thing. 

Dreams and movies are closely related. Movies 
also visualize everything. They do not tell us 
that the hero is saving the heroine's life. He is 
shown rescuing her from death. That simplifies 
things greatly, or rather compels the author of 
movie scenarios to simplify his story so as to in- 
clude only such parts of it which can be shown 
on the screen. Delicate shades of meaning, subtle 
changes of mood cannot very well be indicated by 
movie action. 

"Reel" life is not exactly "real" life. Dream 
life is not exactly waking life either. Things in 
dreams are simplified, as they are in the movies. 
In dreams, we accomplish things very rapidly. 



DREAMS AND THEIR MEANING 13 

We run or fly at terrific speed and nothing usually 
impedes our progress. We are terribly strong 
and always in tfie center of the stage. 

On the other hand, the habits of our waking 
life do not desert us entirely when we dream. 
There is a good deal of hypocrisy in our daily 
life,, things we cannot say or do, because they 
do not exactly sound or look nice and which we 
cover up with harmless formulae. In our dreams, 
too, we manifest a good deal of hypocrisy and 
when we lack the courage to say things outright, 
we manage to say them thru symbols. 

Symbols are curious things. Our language is 
full of them and so are religious ritual and the 
ceremonies of secret societies, and at times they 
are very picturesque. When we wish to imply 
that a man's head is full of absurd, chaotic ideas 
we say in slang that there are "bats in his belfry." 
Do you not see how in a dream a belfry could 
symbolize a head, and bats, morbid, sinister and 
absurd ideas ? 

Our dreams are made up of symbolic actions 
which are, however, easily deciphered, for sym- 



14 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

bols mean the same thing all over the world and 
have always meant the same thing. A nightmare 
is nothing but a dream so symbolical that we can- 
not understand its meaning and the image it con- 
jures up frightens us. As soon as a sufferer from 
frequent nightmares, however, learns to interpret 
them and understand their meaning, he ceases to 
have them or to be frightened by them,. 

Let us now revert to the dreams I mentioned 
at the beginning of this article. A mother dreams 
of the death of her child. Does it mean she 
wishes the child to die? By no means. No more 
so than she would wish her neighbor's child to die 
when that youngster is disturbing the neighbor- 
hood and she says : "I could kill that youngster." 
"I could kill that youngster" simply means "I wish 
that youngster would keep quiet." 

Young mothers whose social activities have 
been interrupted, if not entirely stopped, by 
motherhood, very often have such horrible 
dreams about their babies. Such dreams merely 
remove by a simple, radical and movie-like meth- 
od, the obstacles to their activity, freedom and en- 



DREAMS AND THEIR MEANING 15 

joyment of social pleasures. Let no young woman 
think she is a potential murderess or a heartless 
brute because sjie dreams of her baby's death. 
As soon as she realizes what those dreams mean,, 
she will cease to have them. 

One woman told Freud that she dreamt of 
the funeral of her little nephew of whom she was 
very fond. What kind of a wish fulfillment was 
that ? Well, it turned out that at another nephew's 
funeral she met a man with whom she fell in 
love afterwards and who then abandoned her. 
The dream brought her back to the occasion on 
which she had first met the loved man. 

We observe the same phenomenon in real life. 
A man who has called a little too often on a 
woman, and is short of excuses for calling once 
more, may go to her house and ask everybody 
about the umbrella he left there at the time of his 
last visit. The umbrella will play a leading part 
in his conversation. Everybody will be talking 
about it. But the real object of his call (known 
only to him and probably to her) is his desire to 
see her. 



16 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

The dream acts like the crafty owner of the 
umbrella. By devious ways, when direct ways 
fail, it enables us to gratify all the cravings which 
life in civilized communities compels us to repress. 

Dream interpretation is not an idle pastime. It 
reveals to us our attitude to every problem of 
life, for we spend the night seeking solutions for 
our problems. (This is why we are always ad- 
vised "to sleep on it.") It reveals many cravings 
which we could probably gratify in acceptable, 
social ways; for example: A man who dreams 
every night that he is exhibiting himself in pub- 
lic should try to be an actor, a speaker, or a pub- 
lic man of some kind. 

Falling dreams are simply the way in which 
our unconscious expresses the passage from the 
free, unrestricted, simplified life we lead in 
dreams to the life of social bondage we lead after 
awakening. It is not the dream, which wakes 
us up, but the awakening which produces the fall- 
ing dream. Whoever has such dreams should 
train himself to face his daily life with its tasks 



DREAMS AND THEIR MEANING 17 

and accept them as unavoidable. After this, fall- 
ing dreams will cease. 

Dreams may' call our attention to some dis- 
ease of which we are not conscious ; tooth dreams 
often reveal a pus pocket, an abscess or an infec- 
tion. 

Dream interpretation is not very difficult, but 
it requires a great deal of patience and accuracy. 
Do not try to interpret one dream. Collect 
dreams for several weeks before attempting to 
solve their meanings. Never interpret anyone 
else's dreams without the dreamer's help. For all 
dreams contain allusions to the events of our daily 
life, and the various details of one's dreams con- 
jure up associations which only the dreamer can 
understand. 

One image which means something to you may 
mean just the opposite to some other dreamer. 
Psychoanalysis never ignores the fact that every 
individual is different from every other individ- 
ual, because the experiences which constitute his 
unconscious thoughts are unavoidably different 
from those of any other human being. 



18 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

Dreams of the past, especially of infancy, are 
not healthy, nor are dreams that frighten us, or 
are so involved that we do not understand them. 
Dreams of the present and the future, preferably 
when pleasant and very obvious,, are good and 
healthy. Remember, however, that we can watch 
our unconscious thoughts as well as our conscious 
thoughts and that watching our dreams makes 
them become normal after a while. 



LESSON III 
The Mind and the Brain 

Nervous ailments are so commonly spoken of 
as "mental diseases," "diseases of the mind," 
"brain diseases," etc., that a consideration of the 
words brain and mind is absolutely unavoidable 
before we can discuss such ailments intelligently. 

Dr. Crile's numberless experiments prove 
conclusively that the life force, what Bergson 
calls the vital urge, the something which is found 
in a living organism and is not found in a dead 
organism and produces the various activities 
known as life, is merely an electric current. 

According to this theory which is not new,, but 
which had never before been presented as con- 
vincingly, the brain is simply a complicated gen- 
erator of electric current. 

The brain, in other words, is an agglomeration 

of tiny electric batteries, the brain cells, which 

19 



20 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

are very much like the ordinary wet batteries fur- 
nishing current for door bells. 

The production of electric energy seems to be 
the only function of the brain cells. The brain 
cells do not occupy themselves with any other 
task. 

They do not grow and multiply as other cells of 
the body do. 

After we reach a certain age their number is 
constant. When a brain cell is destroyed no other 
cell takes its place. 

Brain cells do not store up their own food, 
sugar and fat, as other cells do, and therefore do 
not protect themselves against starvation. 

In fact they do not protect themselves against 
anything, lack of oxygen, acidosis and other dan- 
gerous chemical changes. 

Nor do they try to protect the body. 

They are extremely helpless and outside of 
their specific functions, entirely useless. 

The brain, in other words, can be compared 
to an electric power house which produces enough 
electricity to run all the activities of a small town. 



THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 21 

The power house produces nothing besides elec- 
tricity, not even its own fuel. The town must 
house it,, protect it, feed it and tend it. Should 
the dynamo be damaged all the activities of the 
town would be slowed down. Should it be put 
out of order, the life of the town would be sus- 
pended. 

The dynamo produces power. That power is 
transmitted thru cables, wires, etc., runs trolley 
cars, lights street lamps, turns a dentist's 
drill, bakes bread, ventilates a cellar, puts a crimi- 
nal to death, etc. But the dynamo does not con- 
trol the final disposition made of the current it 
generates. 

On one and the same socket may be plugged 
wires, one of which may save a life, the other 
destroy life. 

The same can be said of the brain. The brain 
does not seem to "care" about what becomes of 
the power it generates. If we cut two nerves 
A and B, doing entirely different things and 
splice them the wrong way, A to B and B to A, the 
far end of A will do what it has always done, 



22 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

thanks to the power going down to the end of 
B which is attached to the brain. B will do its 
specific work, for instance, contracting a finger, 
thanks to power coming thru the end of A at- 
tached to the brain altho the function of A may be 
to move a leg. 

As Crile says: "If we could attach the optic 
nerve to the ear and the auditory nerve to the 
eye, we could see the thunder and hear the light- 
ning." 

Locating the mind, soul, intelligence, will 
power, or what not in the brain, is a very unsci- 
entific procedure, prompted probably as Kempf 
suggests by a desire to keep the "higher" func- 
tions of the individual as far as possible above 
the "lower" and "sinful" regions of the body. 

The fact that the most important sense or- 
gan, the organ of sight and several other impor- 
tant organs, those of hearing, taste and smell,, 
are located in the armor of bone and flesh which 
covers the brain, has caused people to confer upon 
the brain a dignity which really belongs to the 
head. 



THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 23 

Furthermore the enormous network of nerves 
supplying with power all the organs located in 
the skull and which is naturally the source of 
many aches, slight or severe, has misled us into 
the belief that "headaches," "pressure in the head" 
and other uncomfortable sensations experienced 
above the shoulders are in some mysterious way 
connected with the brain, caused by it or affect it. 

"Brain-splitting noises," "my brain is ex- 
hausted," "my brain has been affected or dulled 
by alcohol, or tobacco or onanism," are pictur- 
esque but absolutely inaccurate, if not meaning- 
less expressions. 

They are dangerous expressions, however, be- 
cause they generate fears leading at times to grave 
disorders. Coupled with a superstitious belief 
Jn the fateful power of heredity, stories of "dis- 
ordered" brains have wrecked entire families. 

A mother who commits suicide may cause all 
her children to do likewise or to end their days 
in insane asylums, if the poor deluded fools admit 
readily that they have "inherited" their mother's 



24 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

"diseased brain" and hence must, be "mentally ab- 
normal." 

The day when we make people realize that the 
brain is a more or less blind, deaf and dumb dy- 
namo, just as the kidney and liver are blind, deaf 
and dumb garbage reducing plants, and the heart 
a blind, deaf and dumb blood pump, and that the 
specific impulses to do specific things come from 
elsewhere, we shall reduce considerably the num- 
ber of people who believe themselves victims of 
"brain-disease" and act accordingly. 

Of course,, certain injuries to the brain cause 
mental disturbances. Damage inflicted upon the 
switchboard of a large hotel may cause a crossing 
of wires and other disturbances in the system of 
communications of such an establishment. 

In certain cases, neither medical help nor psy- 
chotherapy would avail. A flesh wound heals. 
A brain wound does not heal. 

If the part of the brain which supplies power 
to one leg has been destroyed, let us say by a 
bullet, nothing will ever enable that leg to move 
naturally again. 



THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 25 

On the other hand, mere injury to the brain 
does not necessarily result in neurosis or insan- 
ity unless the neurosis or insanity existed before 
the injury was inflicted. 

Osnato has shown that only those syphilitics 
who, before contracting that disease, were neu- 
rotic, ever become insane afterward, merging in 
what is known as paresis or softening of the 
brain. 

Many soldiers have been shot thru the brain 
and yet have not shown any impairment of their 
faculties. 

No one has to become insane unless he un- 
consciously wishes to do so. 



LESSON IV 

iThe Human Machine, Its Motor and Its 
Brake 

Electricity generated in the brain cells is car- 
ried to every part of the body along wires known 
as nerves. 

There are two kinds of nerves in the body. 
One system of nerves, designated as the sensori- 
motor system, corresponds very closely to the 
switchboard in use in hotels or apartment houses. 
It brings information and sends out directions. 
I am in my room and the switchboard operator an- 
nounces that Mr. Brown is calling on me. 

According to my feelings toward Mr. Brown I 
will send word that I am out or that he may 
come up. 

Likewise the sensory nerves carry information 

to the central nervous system that the radiator 

my finger is touching, is cold or too hot. If it is 

26 



HUMAN MACHINE: MOTOR, BRAKE 27 
too hot, an order is sent along a motor nerve 
to remove my finger. 

From the point of view of psychology, that sys- 
tem of nerves is not very interesting. A man 
could have all his sensory nerves and almost all 
his motor nerves cut, for instance, become blind, 
deaf, dumb, unable to taste or smell, to move his 
limbs, his head, his eyes, etc., and yet remain alive 
and continue to think. 

There is another nervous system, however, 
upon whose activities all normal and abnormal 
psychological phenomena depend. 

It is called the autonomic nervous system. It 
functions as a motor and a brake for the internal 
organs or viscera, glands, heart, lung, stomach, 
liver, intestines, bladder, kidney, pancreas, ad- 
renals, etc., and also for the pupil of the eye, the 
genitals, the rectum,, etc. 

I stated that it was a motor and a brake, for 
one division of that nervous system, the end di- 
vision (whose nerves start from the brain and 
the sacral region) acts as a motor, the middle di- 



28 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

vision (whose nerves originate in the thoracic 
and lumbar section) acts as a brake. 

For instance, the end division causes the stom- 
ach to contract and to churn food which is moved 
toward the intestines; the middle division stops 
the contractions of the stomach or causes the 
stomach to empty itself by moving the food 
toward the mouth, producing nausea and vomit- 
ing, etc. 

The frontispiece map illustrates the work- 
ings of the autonomic system. The nerves which 
activate the internal organs and promote what 
we might call the normal life are represented by 
a double black line. Those which stop or modify 
the life activities are represented by red lines. 
It goes without saying that this map greatly sim- 
plifies the appearance of the autonomic system. 
The connections between the brain or the spinal 
cord and the various organs are in reality infi- 
nitely more complicated. Nor have I taken any 
pains to respect the actual positions or size of the 
various organs which are represented on the 
right-hand side of the map. 



HUMAN MACHINE: MOTOR, BRAKE 29 

We can see by that map how the two divisions 
are constantly at cross purposes, balancing each 
other, as it were. 

The black, or life nerves, contract the pupil, en- 
abling us to see very distinctly, much as a photog- 
rapher who wishes to take a very detailed pic- 
ture uses as small a diaphragm opening as pos- 
sible. 

The red, or safety nerves will, in case of dan- 
ger, dilate the pupil, enabling us to admit more 
light and enlarging also our field of vision, that 
is, enabling us to see farther up and down, right 
and left, altho at the expense of accuracy. 

The life nerves cause the heart to beat slowly, 
hence, to pump the blood out of the veins and into 
the arteries with great force and thoroness, with- 
out developing exhaustion. 

The red nerves cause the heart, when danger is 
present or expected, to beat very fast, throwing 
as much oxygenated blood as possible into the 
limbs which must take to flight or fight. 

The life nerves cause the stomach to do its 
work energetically. 



30 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

The red nerves, in danger, stop at once the di- 
gestive process and do not allow energy needed 
for fight or flight to be used for purposes of di- 
gestion or assimilation. (A simile from life: 
If a fire breaks out in a house at dinner time, we 
abandon the meal and either run away or fight 
the fire.) 

The life nerves produce in the genital region 
the excitement which leads to the sexual act. 

The red nerves, in danger, allay that excitement 
and make the sexual act impossible or difficult. 

(Another simile from life: If a fire breaks out 
while we are courting a woman, all affectionate 
display will at once cease and our only thought, 
in this case as in the other, will be for flight or 
for extinguishing the fire.) 

The black nerves contract the bladder open- 
ing and the rectum in order that we may pass 
feces or urine only when convenient. 

In great danger, as for instance, when young, 
untrained soldiers go into battle, the red nerves 
may empty both bladder and intestine, thereby 
protecting them against the greater injury they 



HUMAN MACHINE: MOTOR, BRAKE 31 

might sustain if receiving a wound while they 
are distended. 

In danger, the red nerves allow large quanti- 
ties of sugar (which is the body's fuel, burnt up 
in the brain) to flow suddenly into the blood 
stream, thus increasing the amount of energy 
available in an emergency. 

They also allow the secretion of the adrenal 
glands, known as adrenin or adrenalin to flow 
freely, stiffening the muscles for fight or flight 
and making the blood clot more quickly, which 
closes wounds and saves the injured individual 
from bleeding to death. 

The red nerves constitute, as we see, a re- 
markable emergency system and safety device. 
They prevent energy from being used in places 
where it is not needed. 

We do not know exactly at the present time 
how this is done. Dr. Crile himself has refused 
to state whether energy flows from the brain into 
the black nerves and is at times switched out of 
the internal organs by the red nerves, or whether 
positive electricity flows in the black nerves and 



32 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

negative electricity in the red nerves. Either 
hypothesis has merits and it is too early for us 
to decide which of them is the most scientific. 

Leaving aside, however, such technical details 
which are not of vital interest to the layman, we 
can retain the first figure of speech, considering 
the black nerves as the motor of the inner organs 
and the red nerves as the brake. 

In the perfectly normal human being, then, the 
black nerves should control all the functions of 
the body, the red nerves acting in emergencies 
only. 

In other words, and to employ a clear simile: 
the motor of an automobile should be allowed 
free play except when turning corners, in crowded 
thoro fares,, going down a steep incline, or when 
a collision appears unavoidable. Then, and then 
only should the brake be applied. 

In the hands of an inexperienced driver or of 
a "nervous" person who sees danger where there 
is none, or who recklessly rushes into danger and 
then jams the brakes, the brakes are being ap- 
plied in and out of season. 



HUMAN MACHINE: MOTOR, BRAKE 33 

The occupants of the machine are given un- 
pleasant jolts and grow "nervous," the body of 
the machine shakes, the machinery is., after a 
few weeks of such handling, thrown out of gear. 
And then, again, when the- steering gear has been 
forced loose by too much jolting, when the cylin- 
ders pound, when the brakes are insecure and 
rattling sounds are heard, even a cold-blooded, 
experienced driver would also feel "nervous." 

Likewise when the human machine has been 
handled carelessly in childhood, being started 
and stopped suddenly and without visible reason, 
the human brakes may contract the habit of set- 
ting themselves in and out of season, to save the 
organism from imaginary dangers. 

Every stoppage of the engine in the human 
organism being due to anxiety, fear or anger, is 
interpreted in after life as anxiety, fear or anger. 

If the process goes on long enough, we may 
face a neurotic condition which may remain very 
mild but which, on the other hand, may lead into 
violent "manic" outbursts or "depressive" suicidal 
moods. 



LESSON V 

The Conscious and the Unconscious 

I said in the preceding lesson that a nervous 
driver was likely to render a car quite unsafe thru 
rough handling, after which the unsafe car 
would make any driver "nervous," this nervous- 
ness leading to more misuse of the car and pos- 
sibly to accidents. 

Fear applies the brakes and every time the 
brakes are applied too suddenly the passengers in 
the car experience uneasiness and fear. This is 
a vicious circle which finds its absolute replica in 
the human organism. 

Fear stops our digestion but if our digestion 
is stopped some time without apparent cause we 
experience a more or less concealed fear, an 
imaginary fear, which, in its turn, will derange 
some more our digestive processes. 

Fear makes our heart throb and dilates our 

34 



THE CONSCIOUS, UNCONSCIOUS 35 

pupil, but if something we know nothing about 
causes us to have violent palpitations, we will ex- 
perience a curipus uneasiness and express fear 
in our countenance. 

Indigestion makes us grouchy, but grouchiness 
promotes indigestion, and so forth. 

In other words, we cannot scientifically divide 
up human phenomena into physical phenomena, 
on the one hand and mental phenomena on the 
other hand. Everything human is at one and the 
same time mental, physical and chemical. 

Nor should we try to solve the problem as to 
whether emotions precede or follow physical phe- 
nomena. What came first, the chicken or the 

egg? 

Remembering this at every step we shall then 
inquire into the nature of the mysterious thing 
designated by psychologists as the "unconscious." 

A man is delivering a lecture before you. You 
are conscious of him, that is, you see and hear 
him, you are conscious of his appearance, of his 
voice,, of his gestures, of the platform on which 
he stands, of the desk in front of him, etc 



36 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

You leave the lecture hall and other interests 
absorb your attention. Three months later you 
have forgotten the lecturer. 

Yet if some one mentions him to you, he will 
"come back" to you at once. 

The question is: "Where was he before he 
came back?" 

Answer : "He was in your unconscious." 

The size, color, shape,, sound, etc., of that lec- 
turer made an impression on a number of 
your nerves. If that impression was very pleas- 
ant, if he was a fine speaker, a good-looking man, 
if his voice was harmonious,, etc., you will prob- 
ably recall easily his name and appearance as well 
as the subject he spoke on that day because you 
have no reason for forgetting that occasion. 
(Demosthenes died several centuries ago, but the 
world has not forgotten him. ) 

On the other hand, if he was a dull, uninterest- 
ing bore, unprepossessing and cursed with an un- 
pleasant voice, you will after a few months,, per- 
haps a few days or hours forget him and only vio- 
lent efforts on your part would "bring him back" 



THE CONSCIOUS, UNCONSCIOUS 37 

to your memory, because you have every reason 
to wish to forget that occasion. 

The first occasion was pleasurable, hence the 
life nerves (see map, frontispiece), which trans- 
mit power to all sorts of pleasure-seeking-end 
activities, will respond with emotions similar to 
those experienced on the day of the lecture and 
which, being pleasurable, were beneficial to the 
organization and cause no fear. 

The dull lecture being unenjoyable, if not pain- 
ful, the red nerves will express fear at a repetition 
of that experience and prevent it from reproduc- 
ing itself in any way. 

The pleasure-pain, memory- forget fulness coin- 
cidence is one which students of psychoanalysis 
should always bear in mind,, incredible as it 
sounds at first. 

If there is something you did once and of 
which you were and are proud, it will take little 
effort on your part to bring it back to memory. 
If you did something shameful, if some one hu- 
miliated you, if you encountered a defeat, you 
will not care to remember it and will probably 



38 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

succeed in forgetting it consciously. As Nietszche 
put it: " 'I have done that' my memory says. 'I 
couldn't have done such a thing' my pride retorts. 
In the end my memory yields." 

In other words, your nerves have stored up or 
registered impressions, each one of them prob- 
ably a slight physical and chemical modification, 
some of which can only be recalled with great dif- 
ficulty, if at all, some of which come back easily. 

Those records of impressions constitute our 
unconscious. 

Let us now compare our conscious life with 
our unconscious life. Our conscious states are 
fleeting. They are like a swift running river 
pouring itself out into a subterranean lake which 
it never seems to fill. Our conscious states are 
constantly becoming unconscious. Pleasure and 
pain, fear, desire, hate,, accumulate in our uncon- 
scious and seem to die out. We think they die but 
none of them does. Psychological tests will bring 
back to us memories harking back sometimes to 
the very first days of our life. 

I repeat, the memories we can recall easily are 



THE CONSCIOUS, UNCONSCIOUS 39 

those of events which affected us pleasantly. If 
they were unpleasant or even humiliating, and 
yet we recall them easily, it is because we have de- 
rived some superiority from the unpleasantness 
or the humiliation they bring back to us. 

It may have been humiliating once to be 
whipped by a brutal teacher, but if I succeeded, at 
the time or later, in establishing my moral su- 
periority to the brutal teacher (for instance, if 
innocent of wrong-doing), I may recall the whip- 
ping with a certain pleasure. 

"Buried" memories have a curious effect on 
us. We meet a man who to all appearances is 
harmless. Yet there is "something" we do not 
like about him. We feel uncomfortable in his 
presence. 

Experience has proved that he suggests some 
one else whose memory is "buried" in our uncon- 
scious and "refuses" to come to consciousness, or 
rather, which our safety nerves do not allow to 
come to consciousness because it would bring with 
itself the memory of some fear, pain or humilia- 
tion. 



40 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

We suddenly experience without any "reason" 
a profound depression, a desire to weep, etc. 
Something again has suggested an association 
between the present moment and a past incident 
which we do not care to bring up to consciousness. 

Those unconscious associations are called com- 
plexes. 

How do they come to establish themselves in 
our organism? 

To make that process clear I must tell my 
readers of interesting laboratory experiments 
performed on dogs. 

One experimenter prepared surgically a dog's 
stomach in such a way that secretions which 
flowed from the walls of that organ would run 
out of the body and into a test tube where they 
could be observed and measured. 

As soon as the dog was given steak to eat, gas- 
tric juice began to flow into the test tube. 

For several days, whenever the dog was fed, 
a bell was rung, the ringing being stopped only 
when the dog finished his meal. 

In other words, while the dog was seeing a 



THE CONSCIOUS, UNCONSCIOUS 41 

piece of meat, smelling it, chewing it and swal- 
lowing it, his ear perceived one and the same 
sound. All the £ime gastric juice was flowing 
from his stomach into the test tube. Of course, 
the sound of the bell had absolutely nothing to do 
originally with the flow of gastric secretion which 
was caused by the sight, smell, taste, etc., of the 
meat. On a certain day, however,, no meat was 
given to the dog but the bell was rung in his ears, 
and behold, gastric juice began to fill the test 
tube as tho the dog had been eating meat. 

That fact that the sight, smell, etc., of meat 
was always accompanied by the sound of a bell 
gave the dog the impression that a bell sound 
was also one of the attributes of meat. 

The dog, of course,, never thought about it, 
but that impression recorded itself on his nerves 
and remained there. 

This is what we call an association. For the 
rest of his life, which like that of every laboratory 
dog was useful but short, poor Fido must have 
been just as cheered or teased by the sound of a 
bell as he was by the sight of juicy steak. Steak 



42 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

and bell were unconsciously associated in his 
"mind." 

Let us now suppose that instead of being served 
steak Fido had been whipped while a bell was 
ringing. The mere sound of a bell would have, 
later on, sufficed to throw him into a panic. Sup- 
pose also that a whipping and a steak had been 
associated too long in Fido's life. He would have 
developed a complete distaste for steak. 

Let us go further and instead of a dog con- 
sider a human being, especially a very young one, 
a child between five and ten,, at the most impres- 
sionable age. 

Let us suppose that on several occasions, or on 
one critical occasion, the child was whipped while 
a bell was ringing. 

The child, humiliated and hurt, more humil- 
iated than hurt, in fact, will make no effort to 
remember that distasteful incident. 

Not only will he not try to remember it but he 
will do his best to forget it. The more humiliat- 
ing the experience was the deeper he will bury 
it or rather, the deeper it will bury itself in 



THE CONSCIOUS, UNCONSCIOUS 43 

his unconscious. Then some day, maybe ten or 
twenty years later, he may develop some disturb- 
ance, one of the, symptoms of which will be a 
morbid restlessness caused by the sound of bells. 
Bells may make him worried, fidgety. A design 
representing a bell may annoy or frighten him. 
When asked to form a sentence containing the 
word bell he may be at a loss to find something 
to say. 1 

He is affected with a bell complex. Complexes 
are then forgotten memories of unpleasant ex- 
periences which disturb our thinking. They are 
like bullets buried in the flesh, no one knows 
where, but which now and then cause sharp pains 
whose origin is a puzzle. 

When thru psychological tests we succeed in 
bringing up to the surface of our consciousness 
those buried memories, we easily break up the 
unconscious associations which disturb us. When 

1 Dr. H. Laveson mentions in the Medical Record for May 21, 
1921, a woman who was morbidly afraid of church towers. It 
came out that years before a church bell had been ringing con- 
tinuously while her mother was undergoing a surgical operation 
followed by her death. The "forgotten" incident could only be 
recalled under hypnosis. 



44 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

our thinking processes seem disturbed and no ob- 
vious reason can be assigned to that disturbance, 
we may conclude that one or several complexes 
are responsible for it. The task of psychoanaly- 
sis is to find out where the bullet is and then to 
extract it. 



LESSON VI 
Complexes and Education 

A study of the associations and complexes 
which create disturbances in our thinking proc- 
esses leads us back invariably to our childhood 
years. The formative period of the human or- 
ganism, is naturally the one in which our nerves 
become trained to react,, almost automatically, 
unconsciously to certain stimuli. 

After all, education simply means this : we are 
trained to react with desire to what we are told 
is "good," with fear to what we are told is "bad." 

In many cases, however, we forget the causes 
of our likes and dislikes, and, moved by uncon- 
scious motives, that is, by forgotten associations, 
we act in irrational, morbid ways. 

One of the cases treated by Freud illustrates 
well the influence certain "traumas" or wounds 

45 



/ 



46 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

inflicted on us in childhood may have on our be- 
havior in later life. 

A patient of his, a girl of 22, suffering from 
hysteria, was unable, during her crises, to drink 
out of a glass or cup. In those days they used 
hypnotism in the treatment of such cases,, a pro- 
cedure which has been entirely abandoned. 
Under hypnotism the girl used to mutter many 
disconnected sentences, in which the words "gov- 
erness," "dog" and "cup" seemed to recur 
with curious frequency. Freud made her repeat 
them over and over again until she gradually be- 
gan to build a consistent story which I will sum 
up as follows : 

When a little girl, the patient was taken care 
of by a brutal governess of whom she was greatly 
afraid. One day the woman allowed her pet dog, 
a repulsive little animal, to lap milk out of the 
child's cup and then, without cleaning the cup, 
compelled the child to drink out of it. The child 
was profoundly disgusted,, but fear of the stern 
governess caused her to repress her feelings and 
obey. 



COMPLEXES AND EDUCATION 47 

And years later, when she began to have hys- 
terical fits, the fear and disgust which she had 
once succeeded in, repressing, came to the surface 
and she was unable to drink out of a glass or 
cup. 

It is not always cruel treatment on the part of 
parents, governesses, etc., which upsets a child's 
mental balance. 

One of the saddest things revealed by the psy- 
choanalytic examination of neurotics is that very 
often the best and most affectionate parents, are 
those who are likely to breed mentally unbalanced 
sons and daughters. 

Affectionate parents must be on their guard 
constantly not to be too affectionate. The little 
boy generally favors his mother and the little girl 
her father, and this is perfectly natural. Human 
beings must feel keenly the attraction of the op- 
posite sex, and when they are perfectly normal, 
they feel it at a very early age. 

On the other hand, if a mother allows her boy 
to become too attached to her, if a father allows 
his little girl to idolize him too much, this exag- 



48 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

gerated affection will be a terrible handicap in 
later life. Freud has gone as far as saying that 
this sort of over-attachment is the actual center 
of disturbance in every neurosis. 

The victims of what analysts call a "fixation" 
on one of the parents will never be independent 
as long as they live and will always run back to 
father or mother figuratively, in emergencies. 

They may never marry or if they do, they may 
make impossible life partners because in no other 
human being do they find the readily offered love 
and devotion, the disinterested advice, and self- 
sacrifice they found in their parents. No wife, 
however ideal she may be, can replace the mother 
in every respect nor should she be expected to 
do so. 

A situation often arises in which the male child 
over-attached to his mother, more or less uncon- 
sciously considers his father as a rival and hates 
him, the female child nursing the same feelings 
against her mother. This is what is known as the 
Oedipus complex and Electra complex. Oedi- 
pus,, King of Thebes, married his mother and 



COMPLEXES AND EDUCATION 49 

killed his father without knowing at the time who 
they were. Electra made her brother Orestes 
kill their mother ,Clytemnestra. 

When the affections of the child have centered 
too completely on the parent of the same sex we 
often observe cases of perversion, men being at- 
tracted to men and women to women. 

The pervert is not a criminal nor a vicious per- 
son. He is the victim of his wrong training and 
in many cases his trouble can be removed by 
proper treatment, not by punishment. 

This brings us to the second of childhood prob- 
lems, one which very few parents are willing to 
face and to solve properly. 

When, how and by whom shall children be told 
the truth about sexual matters? 

More and more psychologists are coming to the 
conclusion that children should be told the entire 
truth as soon as they begin to question their 
parents on the subject. If it were possible to 
keep their minds absolutely pure, and if children 
could be so carefully watched and supervised that 
no improper influence would ever be allowed to 



50 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

exert itself on them, the problem would not be 
so complicated. But the dilemma is this: either 
the proper person or the improper person will en- 
lighten our children on matters of reproduction. 

Shall we see to it that the proper person does 
it or shall we trust to blind chance? If I do not 
tell my children the truth, they will learn a near- 
truth, if not a romantic lie, imparted to them by 
schoolmates. 

Near truths or romantic lies have a great de- 
fect. They do not satisfy the child's mind and 
only cause him to dream too much of forbidden 
subjects and to see solely the pleasant, attractive 
and indecent side of the question. 

Truth stops our imagination. A chemical 
formula does not lend itself to day dreaming, 
nor does an historical fact stated soberly by a 
conscientious historian. 

Children whose minds have been poisoned by 
half-truths on such a tremendous subject have 
been known to develop obsessions and fears which 
later in life make them unable to lead a normal 
life as husbands or wives, as they too often create 



COMPLEXES AND EDUCATION 51 

impotence in men, frigidity in women. Some of 

them, as a consequence of their ignorance, fall 

into many traps and blight their health or their 

» 
future. 

There is something also which parents must 
not lose sight of. If they tell lies, such as the 
stork story, they will in time be found out by their 
children. Children have primitive ways of rea- 
soning. Father lied to me once, hence father is 
a liar. 

The picturesque urchin whose foul mouth deals 
out tabooed information acquires in the child's 
mind a prestige to which his reticent father could 
never aspire. The urchin knows, father either 
does not know, or does not dare to speak, or does 
not know how to give out the information at his 
command, or is generally untruthful. Whatever 
conclusion the baffled child reaches is disastrous. 

The school is evidently not the place in which 
sexual information can be imparted to children. 
Such enlightenment must be strictly individual. 
Either the parents or the family physician and 



52 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

no one else, at least at the present day, should be 
entrusted with that delicate task. 

Parents or a physician, however, can present 
matters of sex to the child in a way which is 
neither romantic, nor untruthful nor indecent. 
They can point out the profound aspects of the 
problem, the great questions of life and its origin, 
and especially the dangers connected with the sex- 
ual life, dangers which are generally glossed over 
by the unripe and ignorant children who enlighten 
other children. 

Another great problem the child has to solve 
is : What is right ? 

The definition of right and wrong for the av- 
erage child is: "What father and mother do is 
right; what they do not do is wrong." 

The result is that a child is painfully upset 
and often fatally injured mentally when his 
father and mother quarrel. The necessity of de- 
ciding in his little mind which .of his parents is 
right and which is wrong, often leaves him so 
confused that he grows up to be a weak-spined 



^ 



COMPLEXES AND EDUCATION 53 

man, who is never able to make up his own mind 
and, in many cases, is lacking in will power. 

What is will power after all but the capacity 
to make a quick choice in an emergency. 

What is a child to do when a row starts at the 
breakfast table and both parents prove tc each 
other that they are absolutely wrong-. Mother's 
tears may affect the child so that he begins to hate 
his father. But at the dinner table the battle 
starts afresh, and father, goaded beyond endur- 
ance, may disregard the child's presence and tell 
mother a few unvarnished truths about her con- 
duct or disposition. 

The child is left bereft of all personal stand- 
ards because he has lost faith in father and 
mother alike. He knows that whatever he may 
do in the future would never be considered from 
the same point of view by both parents. 

Father would criticise him to spite mother, 
and mother would praise him to defend her po- 
sition to father. But neither father's criticisms 
nor mother's praise would appear very valuable 



54 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

to him after he had learned to discount their ac- 
tual worth. 

When the child raised in such environment 
reaches man's estate he will find that the making 
of decisions is a terrible strain upon his mind. 
Mother would have done this, he will say to him- 
self, but father always said she was crazy. Father 
would have done this but then mother always said 
that father was a brute. His red nerves apply 
the brakes whenever his motor starts, regardless 
of the direction he wishes to take. The result is 
inaction, nervousness, unhappiness,, sometimes a 
split in the personality, a part of his personality 
seeking one goal, the other part another goal. 

The perfectly normal child is one who up to 
the time of puberty has imitated both parents 
without showing too much partiality for either 
(which means that the parents had harmonized 
well enough not to create a conflict in the child's 
mind). Such a child would not be obsessed or 
tortured by misinformation about sex problems 
because they had been explained to him in a dig- 
nified way. At puberty, the normal child would 



COMPLEXES AND EDUCATION 55 

imitate the parent of the same sex without show- 
ing any hostility to the parent of the opposite sex. 
Finally, the normal child should while being at- 
tached to his parents be able to imitate people 
outside of the family circle, to acquire valuable 
traits not found within it and then to build up a 
consistent though many-sided and attractive per- 
sonality. 

I may mention in closing that the indifferent 
parent may be as dangerous to the child's men- 
tal health as the over-affectionate one. The child 
whom no parent has praised and petted,, for in- 
stance, the orphan who has been entrusted to some 
institution, whose keepers, however kind they 
may be, cannot lavish on a hundred children the 
affection and care parents would lavish on every 
child separately, is likely to suffer from a sense 
of inferiority which is difficult to remove in later 
life. Such a child does not know he is important 
because no one made him feel his importance. 
The result is a stunting of his emotional life. 

Psychoanalysis has confirmed what we knew, 
that unless a child is brought up in a harmonious 



56 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

home by a father and mother who neither neg- 
lect him nor show him too much affection, the 
seed may be sown for many mental disturbances. 
Not every bad home produces bad results but 
every neurotic is the result of bad home condi- 
tions. 



Lesson vii 

The Hereditary Taint 

What was said in the preceding lesson on the 
influence which early childhood impressions wield 
on us in later life should enable my readers to 
cast out one of the worst devils which torture 
men's minds : the fear of the hereditary taint. 

I must repeat one statement I made in the les- 
son on the mind and the brain : the brain is simply 
a power plant generating electricity. What some 
people call our mind,, our intellect, etc., and what I 
prefer to call our personality is not located there, 
however. 

Our personality is made up of the millions of 
impressions, big and small, painful and pleasant, 
ephemeral and lasting, which have left a record, 
minute as it may be, on our nervous system. 

Hence our personality was not bequeathed to 
us at birth but has grown with the years. There 

57 



58 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

are parts of it which will not be changed easily. 
Parts of it,, on the other hand, which consist in 
the ways in which we think and express our 
thoughts, can constantly be modified and im- 
proved by self-study. 

The hand of the dead only weighs heavily on 
us when we are not conscious of it. Like all 
ghosts, it vanishes into thin air as soon as we 
turn the searchlight on it. 

Was your father queer? Did one of your 
uncles act strangely in the last years of his life, 
or did one of your cousins die in an insane asy- 
lum? If so, stop worrying about the possibility 
of your becoming like them some day. 

Physical heredity is a fact which cannot be de- 
nied. It follows very definite lines, and Mendel's 
experiments have shown that when we cross two 
strains of animals or plants we can foretell with 
mathematical accuracy how many of the offspring 
will present the characters of each strain. Each 
species, in other words, remains true to its type, 
but this is as far as heredity goes. We are given 
a body like that of our ancestors, but the fate of 



THE HEREDITARY TAINT 59 

that body is pretty much entirely left in our own 
hands. 

Physical traits and peculiarities are not "neces- 
sarily" hereditary. You look like your father 
or mother, but there is no earthly reason why you 
should have your father's bent back or your 
mother's weak stomach. If your father had gone 
daily to a gymnasium instead of sitting at home 
and groaning, if your mother had been more care- 
ful about her diet and her temper, both would 
have been healthy specimens. 

If you decide that you are doomed to live with 
a convex back and a miserable digestion, because 
your parents had them,, you will in all probability 
manage to acquire them in due time, especially 
if you follow the same line of irrational conduct 
and make no effort to escape what you call your 
fate. 

Decide to be an athlete, adopt a rational diet, 
avoid excesses, develop your body and mind in 
every direction and you will foil "heredity" very 
easily. 

Mental heredity is a thousand times less dan- 



60 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

gerous than physical heredity. There is an ele- 
ment in human life which is infinitely more potent 
and yet more easily controlled than heredity, and 
which psychoanalysts have observed at work in 
every case — imitation. 

We are what we are because we once imitated 
someone who was then as we are now. Little 
girls, in order to become women, imitate their 
mothers, little boys become men by imitating their 
fathers. Little girls who are motherless have a 
tendency to grow up rather too mannish unless 
some other woman serves as a worthy model. 
Fatherless boys are likewise apt to become effem- 
inate. 

Smile and the world smiles with you. Yawn 
and everybody in the room will start yawning. 
If the baby apparently refuses to pass water, turn 
on a faucet in the bath tub and the child will soon 
be the victim of imitation. 

Imitation, we must remember, proceeds along 
the line of least effort. A tendency to follow that 
line is normal and human. In the neurosis that 
tendency is always greatly exaggerated. 



THE HEREDITARY TAINT 61 

Experiments made on animals illustrate the 
power of imitation very strikingly. Passenger 
pigeons never mate with any other birds, but if 
you let a ring dove hatch the eggs of a passenger 
pigeon, the young birds issuing out of those eggs 
will not mate with birds of their own species, but 
with ring doves only. Instinct, blood and hered- 
ity are in that case and in a thousand other simi- 
lar cases absolutely overthrown by imitation, 
habit, training — call it what you like. 

Certain fish kept in an aquarium, imitate after 
a time the color or pattern of their environment, 
turning blue, green or red, showing on their scale 
a checkerboard design,, etc. 

The trouble is that we do not always imitate 
the best in our environment, but often the worst. 
There are several reasons for this. The worst 
is more easily imitated. It requires less effort to 
be bad than to be good, to be imperfect than to 
be perfect. Also the worst is often more amusing 
and picturesque than the best. Take children to 
the circus, and let them see on the one hand 
beautiful female riders, splendid male athletes 



62 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

and, on the other hand, grotesque clowns or hide- 
ous, deformed freaks. Which will amuse them 
most? The freaks and clowns,, of course. 

A little boy I know walked for two weeks like 
Charlie Chaplin after watching the movie head- 
liner for half an hour. 

A neurotic father will not "beget" neurotic 
children, but his children will imitate him in pref- 
erence to their normal mother, who, being normal, 
is not "funny" and does not appeal to their imag- 
ination. 

A mother who tyrannizes over her household 
by means of her sick headaches is likely to bring 
up girls suffering from the same complaint, not 
because headaches are hereditary, but because her 
daughters, unconsciously aware of the power 
which those headaches give to their mother, will 
manage to repeat the performance on their own 
account. 

Suggestion often works with deadly power. A 
man who believes himself "burdened" with a bad 
heredity may be greatly weakened by that absurd 
belief which is unfortunately shared by many old- 



THE HEREDITARY TAINT 63 

fashioned physicians. He may "let go" in a crisis,, 
commit a theft or a crime because his father or 
grandfather established such a precedent and be- 
cause he "knows" there is no use struggling 
against such "odds." 

The precedent, by the way, may not be more 
than a legend perpetuated by inaccurate, silly or 
gossipy relatives. Your grandfather may have 
once, in a fit of anger, manhandled one of your 
grandmother's relatives. The incident retold by 
her side of the family is entered into the family 
records as evidence of his criminal tendencies. A 
man of morose disposition very often sees his 
trouble diagnosed by amateur psychiatrists in his 
family circle as "melancholia." The stupid parent 
who vents his anger on his offspring by making 
brilliant remarks such as "you are as crazy as 
your father (or mother) was" may start a train 
of thought which is very dangerous. 

I personally know three brothers brought 
up by an unusually unintelligent mother, who had 
themselves committed to an insane asylum on 
several occasions when they lost their money or 



64 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

their jobs. None of them was actually insane, 
altho they kept on repeating that they were bound 
"to go crazy like their father." 

I personally investigated the father's "crazi- 
ness" and found that before his death, which oc- 
curred many years ago, he had had several fits of 
blues, justified by serious slumps in his business. 
He never showed any insane trait, however, at any 
time. He and his wife, on the other hand, never 
had lived very harmoniously and his fits of de- 
pression were described by her in a rather un- 
sympathetic fashion as "crazy fits." 

Men and women have been known to reproduce 
the behavior even of grandparents they have 
never seen. Investigation has shown in many 
cases, and would probably show in all cases, that 
the parents were responsible for that phenome- 
non, as they believed in "genius" or "vice" or 
"character" skipping a generation and had con- 
stantly described their parents to their offspring. 

Inbreeding is another cause for worry which 
some people are likely to seize upon in order to 
torture themselves and drive themselves into in- 



THE HEREDITARY TAINT 65 

sanity. "My father and mother were first cou- 
sins, hence I will sooner or later lose my mind." 

They should remember that the most wonderful 
specimens of blooded animals, horses,, bulls, etc., 
have been produced by inbreeding. They should 
remember that the marvelous Greek civilization 
of the fifth century B. C. was due to the inbreed- 
ing of a handful of Athenians who produced 
about fifteen of the world's greatest thinkers, ar- 
tists, dramatists, etc. And the downfall of Hel- 
lenism was not due to any weakening of the strain, 
but to the invasion of Greece by powerful and 
ruthless barbarian hordes. 

It goes without saying that if two first cou- 
sins are neurotic and marry, their children will be 
in a bad plight. They will only have abnormal 
examples before their eyes. If blood relations, 
however, are healthy, their offspring, unless in- 
fluenced by unscientific talk about the dangers of 
inbreeding, are bound to be quite as hale and 
hardy. 

Whether our heredity is good or bad, whether 
our father was a genius or a fool, our grandfather 



66 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

a saint or a criminal, we can counteract years 
of imitation by becoming aware of the source of 
many of our involuntary acts and thoughts. 

When we become convinced that we are imi- 
tating someone else instead of trying to be our- 
selves, imitating a weak, sick model, instead of 
picking out a worthy person for imitation, we can 
in a reasonable period of time entirely change 
our mode of life and our form of thought. 

Our parents may have constituted the wrong 
kind of environment, but if we do not let senti- 
mentalism blind us as to that fact there will be 
at our disposal libraries, lectures and meeting 
halls, where we can become acquainted with ac- 
tive, worthy men and women, positive and pro- 
ductive, whom we can and should imitate, and 
thus dispel the mental ghosts which thrive in the 
atmosphere of certain neurotic homes. 

Ask yourself: Am I myself,, or am I imitat- 
ing someone else? 

Is my model a positive one or am I following 
the neurotic, selfish and unsocial line of least 
effort? 



THE HEREDITARY TAINT 



67 



The day when we realize the weakness of he- 
redity and the power of imitation we shall take 
more pains to surround our children with influ- 
ences that will upbuild them physically and men- 
tally and avoid bandying half-scientific state- 
ments about inherited traits which at times prove 
a curse to the weak and gullible. 

Then the knowledge of our abnormal ascen- 
dancy will not trouble us in the least. Instead of 
saying: "What can I do against such odds?" we 
shall train ourselves to avoid the mistakes of our 
forbears. Father killed himself by overeating. 
Let us not do likewise. Heredity shall then cease 
to be a menace and will, on the contrary, be a 
warning and a guide. 



LESSON VIII 
The Neurosis 

On the basis of what has been explained in the 
foregoing chapters we can define every "ner- 
vous" or "mental" ailment as the morbid expres- 
sion of a craving which is not consciously recog- 
nised. 

The word nervous ailment is very unsatisfac- 
tory for the purely physical deterioration of a 
nerve, due to an accident or a war wound, may 
cause, for instance, an eyelid to close or a hand to 
wither. Psychoanalysis has nothing to do with 
such conditions which are relevant of medicine 
or surgery. The word mental disease is quite as 
unsatisfactory. "Nervous" headaches,, or stom- 
ach aches, "nervous" blindness, "nervous" impo- 
tence, etc., have nothing to do with wounded 
nerves and are generally of "mental" origin, al- 

68 



THE NEUROSIS 69 

tho the expression "mental disease" is rarely ap- 
plied to them, being reserved for "insanity." 

Insanity is another inaccurate word: a patient 
can only be described as insane when several phy- 
sicians have decided that his condition makes it 
unsafe for him or his environment to be left at 
large. Hence behavior which appears insane and 
dangerous in one place may only appear eccentric 
in another place. 

The word neurosis is thus far the best to desig- 
nate all varieties of morbid conduct, from a slight 
touch of blues to violent "manic" behavior. 

Many meaningless classifications of the neu- 
roses have been offered. I will present several 
of those classifications,, for their vocabulary is 
in very general use, even in the writings of the 
most modern psychiatrists, for convenience' sake. 

For many years a distinction was drawn be- 
tween neuroses and psychoses, the first term being 
applied to mild cases, the second to severe cases. 

Three varieties of insanity were generally rec- 
ognised : Paranoia, in which the patient has delu- 
sions of greatness and persecution; Manic De- 






70 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

pressive Insanity, in which the patient alternates 
between periods of great excitement and 
periods of profound depression ; finally, Dementia 
Prcecox, including practically all the cases which 
were neither "pure" paranoiac nor "pure" manic 
depressive cases. 

Dementia Prcecox patients had to be further di- 
vided up into paranoid types, when their behavior 
in certain respects reminded one of paranoia; 
hebephrenic types, when they were childish and 
silly ; catatonic, when they became stereotyped in 
their gestures, motionless, etc. 

That sort of classification is handy for psychi- 
atrists in a hurry, for it gives a clear picture of 
what the patient is doing at the time when he is 
observed; patients, unfortunately, do not always 
persevere in one line of behavior and often have 
to be reclassified. Nor would psychiatrists ex- 
amining them independently at varying periods 
always agree on their diagnosis. 

Freud offered a classification which is almost 
as arbitrary. He draws lines of demarkation be- 



THE NEUROSIS 71 

tween the actual neuroses, the psychoneuroses and 
the psychoses. 

The actual neuroses include neurasthenia and 
anxiety neurosis ; the psychoneuroses include hys- 
teria,, anxiety hysteria and the obsessions. Epi- 
lepsy is classified either with the neuroses or the 
psychoneuroses. 

Freud further differentiates between the De- 
fence Psychoses and the Overpowering Psy- 
choses. In the first, one idea is violently re- 
pressed; in the second, a craving has absolutely 
overpowered the personality. 

Freud's classification is very artificial for there 
is no "pure" clinical picture including only cer- 
tain symptoms and always excluding all other 
symptoms. 

Every morbid state includes anxiety, slight or 
severe. The vague ailment known as neuras- 
thenia, and the various compulsions are merely 
symptoms, not definite disease entities. 

Kempf was the first to suggest the word neu- 
rosis for all neurotic ailments, be they neuroses, 
psychoneuroses or psychoses. 



J2 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

He divides neuroses into five distinct types: 

a. Suppression Neuroses in which the patient 
is more or less conscious of the cause of his trou- 
ble: for instance, a man in love, who loses his 
sleep or his appetite. 

b. Repression Neuroses in which the patient 
cannot recognise the cause of his trouble: for 
instance, a patient who becomes lame in a morbid 
endeavor to be taken care of and insists that his 
lameness is due to a fall. 

c. Compensation Neuroses in which the patient 
displays egotism, intolerance, boastfulness, to 
cover up a feeling of inferiority or undesirable 
wishes : for instance, a very sick man imagining 
he has herculean powers. 

d. Regression Neuroses in which the patient 
becomes childish, lazy, slovenly. 

e. Dissociation Neuroses in which the patient 
is annoyed by weird, distorted images, hallucina- 
tions, fears, etc. 

Here again the criticism may be made that 
there are no neuroses which do not show at some 
time one of those five mechanisms, suppression, 



THE NEUROSIS 73 

repression, compensation, regression and dissoci- 
ation. 

Every neurotic is conscious of some suppressed 
cravings, unconscious of many repressed ones, 
always seeks compensation for some form of in- 
feriority, regresses to a more or less distant past 
in his search for precedents ; finally the struggle 
between his conscious and his unconscious per- 
sonalities always results in a dissociation, a split,, 
however slight. 

I shall not therefore attempt to offer to my 
readers a new classification of the neuroses. 

What is important after all is not the disease 
but the patient. 

As some one said very justly: "there are no 
sicknesses, there are only sick people." 

What is vital is the individual psychology of 
each neurotic. 

Classifying him as a paranoiac renders no serv- 
ice and simply describes the way in which he is 
trying to reach a certain goal, altho he does not 
know that he is trying to reach that goal. 

Every neurotic has a goal which he tries to 



74 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

reach in morbid ways. The question to ask our- 
selves is then : 

"What is the neurotic trying to do and why has 
he adopted one specific variety of morbid be- 
havior ?" 

It is only when we have answered that ques- 
tion that we can hope to help him out of his diffi- 
culty by revealing to him what he is trying to 
do and pointing out a way of doing it which is 
pleasant and socially acceptable. 



• LESSON IX 

The Flight from Reality and the 
Regression 

The neurotic is or thinks he is inferior in some 
way. He may or may not know in what way he is 
inferior. He may have weak glands whose exist- 
ence and location he does not even suspect. He 
obscurely feels, however, that he is not like other 
people. 

He thinks that he cannot compete with others 
on a footing of perfect equality or cope as others 
do with life's emergencies. 

Putting down that feeling as imaginary, when 
it appears grossly unjustified, does not solve the 
problem. For every imaginary inferiority has a 
tendency to become real. The man who never 
walks because he thinks his legs would not carry 
him,, will, after a while, develop an actual weak- 
ness of the legs. The man who thinks that his 

75 



76 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

stomach cannot digest any but the lightest kind 
of food, may be terribly distressed when he 
attempts after several years of childish dieting, to 
eat pork or beef. 

A feeling of inferiority may be forced upon 
us in a good many ways. A child suffering from 
a tuberculous hip, a rupture, intestinal inflam- 
mation, is constantly reminded by his parents 
or guardians that he is not like the other children. 
He finally accepts that reminder as the statement 
of an absolute and permanent fact; for whiie his 
condition deprives him of many forms of fun it 
assures him numberless privileges. 

Certain conditions from which there is appar- 
ently no escape may have the same effect as a 
bodily disability. A girl of thirteen had been 
greatly spoilt by her father and mother. A baby 
sister was born and the newcomer at once monopo- 
lised the care and attention of parents, relatives,, 
neighbors, family physician, servants, etc. The 
baby's health and comfort were the paramount 
issues in the government of the household, the 
constant topic for conversation, the baby's cute- 



FLIGHT FROM REALITY 77 

ness was praised, its meaningless babble consid- 
ered as heavenly music. When soon after, the 
father died and the poor girl was for conveni- 
ence' sake, shipped to a boarding school, she 
felt bereft of everything, of her prestige, home 
and mother, stolen by the baby, of her father, 
taken by death. She has felt "inferior" ever 
since. 

Repeated failure to win love and affection in 
childhood years is very frequently a solid basis for 
an inferiority complex. 

The man who is burdened with such a sense of 
inferiority or inadequacy or incompleteness, be 
it real or imaginary, fears defeat and consciously 
or unconsciously concentrates all his thoughts on 
a constant endeavor to protect himself against 
defeat. 

Reality seems to him fraught with all sorts of 
perils regardless of whatever angle he may view 
it from. He magnifies the problems he will have 
to solve. He looks for easy and ready made solu- 
tions. He finds some of those solutions in the 
present and most of them, in the past. 



78 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

He naturally imitates other people who are, 
like him, "disabled" in some way and adopts un- 
critically their solution of their problem. As I 
have stated in a previous chapter, neurotic traits 
and ways are easier and more pleasant to copy 
than normal traits and ways. 

He also seeks to lean on some stronger indi- 
vidual and his memory brings back to him images 
of safe situations while in the parents' care. 
Freud tells us that the neurotic is trying to grati- 
fy, as a grown-up, cravings which he repressed 
when a child. It is much more reasonable to admit 
with Adler that the neurotic, seeking safety, 
harks back to the safest period of his life, child- 
hood. In his childhood, all his problems were 
solved for him by adults in his environment. 

The more servile his imitation of his own child- 
ish behavior is, the more severe his neurosis will 
be. A patient at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Wash- 
ington, D. C.,, regressed, not only to childhood, 
but to the prenatal state. She spent her days 
squatting in a blanket hanging by its four corners 



FLIGHT FROM REALITY 79 

in front of a window, thus reproducing symboli- 
cally the position of the fetus in the womb. 

In other words the dominant trait in the neuro- 
sis is an attempf at escaping present reality and 
at substituting for it an easier set of environ- 
mental conditions in which the neurotic will not 
stand in fear of defeat. 

The flight from reality is carried out along the 
line of selfish, unsocial, least effort. The result 
is always, in its final analysis, and regardless of 
its apparent success, unpleasant for the neurotic 
and for his environment. 

As some one said: "The neurosis is an adapta- 
tion to life which has failed." It fails because the 
neurotic solution for life's problems is too direct, 
too simple, too primitive, too archaic, the neurotic 
disregarding too completely the complexity of 
modern life. 

The neurotic refuses to realise that every hu- 
man being is a mere cell in the body social. No 
cell can expect to lead a separate life, unrelated to 
the life of the body; no cell can expect preferen- 
tial treatment from the other cells unless it earns 



,ent 



80 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

that privilege thru unusual accomplishments. (For 
instance, the brain cells which are fed and pro- 
tected by the entire organism because they pro- 
duce the electric power without which no part 
of the body could remain alive.) In the human 
body any cell which detaches itself from the sur- 
rounding cell withers and perishes. Any cell 
which becomes a drain on the other cells is ex- 
pelled by them. 

The neurotic, thinking he is different from all 
other human beings, sets himself apart from the 
others and attempts to secure too quickly and 
without giving adequate compensation the things 
which he craves. 

He may be a murderer, eliminating another 
man to acquire quickly and without work his vic- 
tim's possessions, or a thief attaining the same 
results without violence, or a gambler who ex- 
pects from luck or fate what others expect from 
slow, continued effort. 

Others do their allotted tasks indifferently and 
blame convenient scapegoats for the resultant 
failure : "My heredity is bad," "I had no educa- 



FLIGHT FROM REALITY 81 

tion," "I don't sleep nights," "I am a victim of 
my environment," "I am a sick man," etc. 

Others refuse to recognise a part of reality. 
Amnesia destroys a period of our past which an- 
noys us, aphasia or stammering prevent or delay 
utterances of a damaging nature, blindness or 
deafness close our eyes or ears to unpleasant de- 
tails of our environment. 

Travel, in many a globe trotter, is a flight from 
reality into what, owing to the enchantment of 
distance, seems unreal. 

Drugs blunt our perception of reality, and so 
does alcohol. 

Drugs and alcohol also act as scapegoats: "I 
was drunk or drug-crazed at the time and I can- 
not remember what I did." 

Heart trouble, rheumatism, sleeplessness save 
us from many exhausting tasks. Gastric pains 
assure us a better diet. 

Epilepsy, fainting, sleeping sickness, etc., as- 
sure us a peaceful existence in which we shall 
lack neither sympathy nor care. 

In dual personalities, our second state enables 



82 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

us to lead a simpler life than the one we must lead 
in our normal state, while all the misdeeds com- 
mitted in the second state are condoned. 

Homosexualism protects woman from man's 
domination, man from woman's domination. Mas- 
turbation obviates the necessity of finding and 
keeping a sexual partner. Total impotence or fri- 
gidity saves us from the fear of all sexual crav- 
ings. 

Complete insanity enables us to indulge in 
unsocial acts without fear of punishment. Final- 
ly, suicide eliminates entirely the dreaded reality. 

Our choice of a neurosis depends naturally on 
two factors, our vitality, that is, the condition of 
our organism and especially of certain glands like 
the thyroid and the adrenals which make us either 
aggressive or submissive, and memories recorded 
in our autonomic nerves and which predispose us 
to act in a certain way because that way is familiar 
to us. 

The murderer would become a sneak thief 
if he had weaker muscles and deficient adrenals. 
A devitalised liar might develop stammering or 



FLIGHT FROM REALITY 83 

aphasia. A weak woman may become a life in- 
valid ; with a better thyroid she might have been 
a nagging wife, a poisonous gossip, a brutal 
mother. 

Memories, especially memories of neurotic so- 
lutions which worked, help us to select from the 
many available neurotic ailments. 

A woman intent on escaping reality will imi- 
tate her mother's neurotic ways if they once 
seemed to solve her mother's problems. She will 
adopt her headaches, her hysterical vomiting, her 
fainting fits. 

A patient of mine whose father died from can- 
cer of the rectum after years of idleness, tried 
hard to irritate his rectum thru continuous 
scratching. The slightest inflammation of his 
rectal region, coupled with his family's supersti- 
tious belief in heredity, would have assured him 
at an early age the peaceful life of an invalid. 

It goes without saying that in our choice of 
remembered solutions, we imitate ourselves first 
whenever convenient. 



84 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

The things which worked in our past are always 
tried first. 

A patient who had suffered from night con- 
vulsions when a child (which assured him of the 
mother's care day and night) developed, at twen- 
ty-seven, night fits of epilepsy, giving him the 
same advantages, besides an excuse for idling. 

He had been a squeamish baby. At the time 
of his "breakdown," he developed a "nervous 
stomach" which compelled his mother to prepare 
special meals for him and prevented him from 
straying too far from home (added difficulty in 
finding employment). 

A boy of fifteen sent away from home during 
the summer to a farm house where he received 
scant attention and felt very home-sick, started 
again to wet his bed at night as he had done till 
he was seven (thus compelling his mother to lav- 
ish more physical care upon him). His regres- 
sion to childish enuresis made his continued so- 
journ in an unpleasant place an impossibility. He 
had to go back to his home and his mother. 

Another patient wet his bed until the very 



FLIGHT FROM REALITY 85 

night preceding his departure for college. After 
that, that neurotic symptom would have only 
brought him humiliation without vouchsafing him 
any extra care, and it disappeared. 

During the war, neurotics were often freed of 
their symptoms by being torpedoed, that is, sub- 
mitted to an extremely painful electric discharge. 
The cure being worse than the ailment, the ail- 
ment yielded. That sort of treatment, however, 
is merely brutal and stupidly inefficient, for the 
symptoms it removes either return shortly after- 
ward or are replaced by an entirely new set of 
symptoms. (A lame man becoming blind after 
being "cured" of his lameness by punitive electro- 
therapy.) 

In the next lesson we shall review the most 
common neurotic ailments and analyze their 
actual meaning as a means of escape from reality. 



LESSON X 
Pen Pictures of Neurotics 

If the limits of this book allowed me to present 
in all their details some of the cases I have studied, 
I could show that every neurotic ailment is an in- 
valuable asset to the neurotic, altho a painful and 
undesirable asset. The neurotic, obsessed by his 
feeling of inferiority, does not realise that he 
could probably compete successfully with other 
human beings with fair weapons, if he only dared 
to try. But he does not dare and he bears a 
grudge to the reality that frightens him. 

A well established and recognised neurotic ail- 
ment assures the neurotic the following advan- 
tages : 

IT IS A SHORT-CUT TO POWER (unso- 
cial, because lazy, selfish, dishonest or criminal). 

IT ALLOWS ONE TO FOLLOW THE 

86 



PEN PICTURES OF NEUROTICS 87 

LINE OF LEAST EFFORT (being cared for 
by one's environment). 

IT ASSURES ONE OF SYMPATHY 
("This sickness has wrecked my life"). 

IT PROTECTS ONE'S EGOTISM ("Who 
can tell where I would be but for my sickness?"). 

IT PROTECTS ONE AGAINST THE HU- 
MILIATION OF FAILURE ("What can you 
expect from a sick man?"). 

IT INSURES ONE EXAGGERATED 
CREDIT FOR TRIFLING ACCOMPLISH- 
MENTS ("I did that in spite of my sickness"). 

IT ENABLES ONE TO SELECT SCAPE- 
GOATS ("I am a victim of my heredity, environ- 
ment, etc."). 

IT ENABLES ONE TO GET EVEN WITH 
PEOPLE (spending for treatment a stingy hus- 
band's money, making a disliked person suffer, 
compelling a bully to obey, etc.). 

Every one of the pen pictures I intend to pre- 
sent illustrates one or more of the above assets, 
but complete records of cases would show that in 



88 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

every case every one of those assets were vouch- 
safed to the neurotic by his or her illness. 

An Insane Craving 

A young woman undergoing treatment for 
murderous cravings, but who was beginning to 
understand her states of mind well enough not to 
do anything foolish, told me one day that, while 
attending a wedding the day before, "she felt an 
insane craving to shout" which she, however, re- 
pressed. 

"What thoughts came to your mind just then ?" 
I asked her. 

"I thought : everybody will turn round to look 
at me and come to my assistance." 

"At what time during the ceremony did you 
have that thought?" 

"While the pastor was turning toward the bride 
and saying how beautiful she was." 

When I asked my patient why she hated the 
bride, she first denied indignantly having ever 
had such feelings., but further questioning elicited 
the information that while my patient is small and 



PEN PICTURES OF NEUROTICS 89 

stout, the bride is tall and slender. The bride is 
a Unitarian, my patient a Baptist who considers 
that Unitarians are heathens. My patient eloped 
with her husband and did not have any elaborate 
wedding. The bride has a wealthy home where 
many guests were assembled to witness the mar- 
riage ceremony. 

TRYING TO JOIN THE CROWD 

A woman of forty called on me and assured 
me that she was going insane owing to her change 
of life. She had for several years financed and 
nursed a group of invalids living in her home, a 
brother, an aunt and a cousin. Her climacteric, 
which afterward proved not to be a climacteric, 
and about which she had gathered, thru unguided 
reading, the most absurd and inaccurate notions, 
seemed to be the excuse she had been seeking for 
years for deserting her parasites and enjoying 
the peace and the care-free, tho morbid, idleness, 
which had been their lot. 

When I finally convinced her that her health 
should be her first consideration and prevailed 



9o LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

upon her to move away from her "sanatorium" 
and to shift its burden upon other relatives, all 
the symptoms of her self-diagnosed "psychop- 
athy" (as she called it on her first visit), disap- 
peared. 

A FLIGHT FROM RESPONSIBILITY 

A manufacturer worried over business difficul- 
ties became obsessed with the idea that his ner- 
vousness and sleeplessness were due not to his 
business failure, but to syphilis, which he con- 
tracted when twenty-two years of age. Accord- 
ing to all the usual tests, his infection had been, 
if not cured, at least made very harmless by 
specific treatment. 

Exactly a year before he consulted me, he had 
had himself committed to a hospital for the insane 
where he remained some ten weeks. 

As both his admission to that institution and 
his first call on me preceded by two weeks the 
yearly accounting of his firm's books, I grew sus- 
picious and drew from him the admission that he 
had swindled his partner out of a good deal of 



PEN PICTURES OF NEUROTICS 91 

money thru "private sales" and other devices and 
assigned almost all his possessions to his wife 
"as he no longer felt competent to handle funds." 

A mere crook and pretender, the reader may 
remark. By no means ! 

A victim of the fear of exposure called re- 
morse, and who, if exposure had come might 
have become a genuine paranoiac, ending his days 
in an asylum, safely removed from financial re- 
sponsibility. 

THE EGO ON PARADE 

An epileptic attended a restaurant party. Every 
man had brought his sweetheart. He alone had 
no one to flirt with. So long as the conversation 
remained general, he did not feel "queer." As 
the evening wore on, however, he began to notice 
that the air was bad, the tobacco smoke too thick, 
the conversation stupid and he calculated that 
the bill for the entertainment (a Dutch treat) 
would run high. He drew a waitress into con- 
versation and felt better. But when a patron, 
with whom she was more intimately acquainted, 
detracted her attention from, him, he threw a fit. 



92 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

The laughing, flirting, singing and dancing 
came to an end. He had been neglected by all. 
Now they all had to pay attention to him, pick 
him up, nurse him, find a physician, take him 
home. 

He had become the center of interest and 
avenged himself upon his friends for their per- 
fectly justified neglect of him which he, however, 
resented terribly. 

GASTRIC PAINS WITH A PURPOSE 

A husband whose digestion had always been 
good began to suffer torture every time he had to 
lunch down town. He decided that the home fare 
would improve his condition and he wasted a con- 
siderable time every day going home for lunch. 
His gastric pains disappeared almost suddenly 
when a friend whom he suspected of liking his 
wife too well left for South America. 

He had reasons to believe that his wife and his 
friend had been lunching together frequently. But 
his "pride" compelled him to repress his suspi- 
cions even to himself. 



PEN PICTURES OF NEUROTICS 93 

A young man with a strong mother fixation had 
vomiting fits whenever compelled to eat at a res- 
taurant. Being "very sickly" he seldom worked 
and allowed his 'mother to support him most of 
the time. At home, however, he had a ravenous 
appetite and did more than justice to the noon-day 
meal. 

He could not take any position which did not 
allow him, enough time to go home for lunch. 

SUSPICIOUS THROAT TROUBLE 

On one occasion I sent a young couple who, 
owing to sexual ignorance and family maladjust- 
ments, had messed up the first years of their mar- 
ried life on a second honeymoon. The result was 
disastrous. Ten days after their departure, the 
wife who was my patient, telephoned from a sea- 
side resort that she would be too sick to keep her 
appointment the next day. 

To my query "What business did you have to 
get sick ?" she gave a rather impatient answer. 

When three weeks later she returned to the 



94 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

city, she upbraided me for my lack of sympathy 
and for asking such silly questions. 

She assured me at first that she had had no 
reason for being sick. 

I assured her that she must have had very good 
reasons, as experience has taught me that many 
a "sore throat" (diagnosed as diphtheria when 
the patient is well-to-do) is the "conversion" or 
physical expression and result of a repressed 
scene. 

After a long cross-examination she finally 
made a full confession. 

To her sentimental nature, the perspective of 
a tete-a-tete in that almost deserted spot (it was 
in the winter time) appeared very romantic. Her 
matter-of-fact husband, on the other hand, viewed 
things differently. The empty dining room meant 
boredom. Nor were the appointments at that 
time of the year what they might have been at 
the height of the season. 

Physical comfort to him was more important 
than romance. Finally, the hotel rates were out- 
rageous. 



\ 



PEN PICTURES OF NEUROTICS 95 

A real lover or a husband with the soul of a 
lover might have overlooked those details. In the 
course of the dinner, the tactless fool managed 
to intimate that the whole thing was a nuisance 
and that the game was not worth the candle. 

After dinner, they retired to their room and 
read the papers in silence for an hour or two, 
after which the young wife felt very sick, fever- 
ish, etc. A doctor was summoned and diagnosed 
diphtheria. The doctor was young and good look- 
ing. She was quite sick for two weeks. 

One will notice that the nature of her illness 
made all sexual intimacy impossible, in fact, com- 
pelled her husband to sleep in another room. Her 
sickness increased the gloom of the place, its dis- 
comfort and also the expense of the trip. She 
got even with her husband for whose crusty sor- 
didness the attentions of the nice young physician 
fully made up. 

TWO CASES OF PROTECTIVE DIZZINESS 

I. A bank clerk suffered from dizziness and 
once fell, injuring his wrist severely. I soon found 



96 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

out that the dizzy spells always came on the same 
day of the week. On that day the clerk was com- 
pelled to stay after hours and attend to special 
duties which easily led into temptation. As soon 
as I found that out, I asked him point blank: 
"How much have you stolen thus far?" 

The amount, fortunately was not very large. 

He has since confessed to his employers and 
is repaying the "loan" in weekly instalments. He 
no longer feels dizzy. 

2. A young married woman also had several 
dizzy fits as she was leaving her home to go shop- 
ping. For several days she did not dare to ven- 
ture on the street alone and asked her maid to 
accompany her. She had no difficulty in keep- 
ing her balance when the girl was with her. 

One day, feeling better, she went out and was 
overcome in front of a telephone booth in a drug 
store. This made me suspicious and I asked her 
whom she was going to call up. 

This brought a blush and a confession. For 
a month she had been struggling against the temp- 
tation to meet a man who had made several trysts 



PEN PICTURES OF NEUROTICS 97 

with her. Consciously she craved the excitement, 
the romance of the situation. Unconsciously the 
man was repellent to her. 

Her unconscious had saved her from the temp- 
tation by "converting" her indecision into the 
same dizzy state which had tried to protect the 
bank clerk from further thefts and their conse- 
quences. 

SICK HEADACHES AND SICK VOMITING 

The woman suffering from sick headaches 
is almost invariably a weak individual who 
either shrinks from taking decisions or is domi- 
nated by her husband, perhaps burdened with 
household duties if not with several noisy, ill-be- 
haved children. 

Protected by her sick headache, she can post- 
pone all decisions, let some one else shoulder the 
responsibilities and incur criticism in case of 
failure. 

In her home she becomes a center of attention 
and sympathy. Her husband must look and act 
sorry whether he feels sorry or not. 






98 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

She is relieved from every household care. The 
children are silenced. Neighbors or relatives of- 
fer assistance. The doctor calls, chats and brings 
news. For one, two or three days, mother has 
made herself felt, has compelled every one to 
realise her importance and is herself a little more 
convinced of her real importance. 

And life resumes its humdrum course until 
mother facing the necessity of making another de- 
cision, seeing the possibility of defeat and hu- 
miliation, being reminded of her lack of impor- 
tance, resorts once more to a flight into sickness. 
Little Rollo has had a glorious time Saturday 
and Sunday. He is not sure he has done all his 
home work. And at 10.30 on Monday morning 
there is a dreadful teacher who is going to ask 
him questions. Right after breakfast or just af- 
ter reaching the school house Rollo has an attack 
of vomiting. If this happens at home, Rollo is 
safe against the annoyance of going to school. If 
at school, who would bother, the poor sick child, 
who would expect him, even when the fit is over, 
to be as smart as a perfectly well boy would be? 



PEN PICTURES OF NEUROTICS 99 

Finally, the teacher, knowing that Rollo is "deli- 
cate" will not pester him in the future and makes 
many allowances for his "trouble." 

The trouble is that all those expedients work 
well, too well. 

When in trouble, the neurotic, negative indi- 
vidual who does not care to face life, has a ten- 
dency to solve his problems in the easiest way, in 
a safe way which has been proved to work. 

Sickness is always a good solution for our dif- 
ficulties. Chinese statesmen have made the dip- 
lomatic sickness famous. The difference between 
the neurotic and the Chinese statesman is that 
the neurotic is really sick and the Chinaman pre- 
tends he is sick. 

Pretending, however, is a dangerous game. 
Pretend long enough that you are dignified and 
you will acquire a great deal of dignity. The man 
who stoops down, stares at the ground and drags 
himself along the street is likely to gradually suit 
his mood to his attitude and to feel depressed. 

Our moods influence our attitudes but our atti- 
tudes influence our moods quite as much. The 



ioo LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 
man who thinks that he can never cope with the 
world's emergencies by being himself and that he 
must pretend and cheat will train himself soon 
to pretend and cheat unconsciously. 



LESSON XI 

Genius and Neurosis 

Normality is indeed a very relative term. It 
depends upon latitude, longitude, climate, social 
position, local customs, etc. 

The great sluggish masses of "ordinary" peo- 
ple who just work, reproduce their kind and ac- 
complish daily all the acts of life according to an 
immutable ritual, consider themselves and are 
generally considered as normal. 

They are normal animals, surely, but are they 
normal human beings ? Animals go thru the mo- 
notony of invariable acts repeated day after day 
and are apparently satisfied. 

After many centuries of cat life, cats still lie in 
wait near a mouse hole for the mouse that may or 
may not come out of the hole; robins wait for 
worms to crawl out of the damp sod. 

IOI 



102 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

Man uses mouse traps and turns up the sod 
for worms. 

Man, or at least some men, are apparently dis- 
satisfied with reality as they find it. Some of 
them proceed to modify reality so as to make it 
more pleasant for themselves as well as for others. 
Once, some man dissatisfied with walking, rode 
animals ; dissatisfied with that mode of transpor- 
tation, he hitched a vehicle to the animal and rode 
more comfortably; later another man discarded 
animals as motive power and used steam, then 
electricity. Finally, cloyed with travel on the 
surface of the earth, man rose above it, first in 
balloons, slow and helpless, then in dirigibles, 
faster and less unreliable, finally in planes speedier 
than any bird. 

Why are animals satisfied and men dissatisfied? 
I don't know. But whatever the actual cause may 
be, man differs from the animals because animals 
are static and man is evolving upward. 

The more marked that upward trend is in a 
man, the more normally human or the more ab- 



GENIUS AND NEUROSIS 103 

normally neurotic he will be. All depends on the 
final result of that upward urge. 

Up to a certain point neurotic and creative man 
are alarmingly alike. Both of them are dissatis- 
fied with reality. 

There, however, their resemblance ends. 

The trip to Chicago is more pleasant nowadays 
than it was a hundred years ago because a dissat- 
isfied man substituted the Twentieth Century 
Limited for the stage coach. And for that reason 
we call him a genius. 

The neurotic would also be dissatisfied with the 
stage coach, but his dissatisfaction would ex- 
press itself either thru a fit of anger in which he 
might abuse or destroy the stage coach or a delu- 
sion in which, while remaining at home, he might 
imagine he had been transported to Chicago. In 
neither case would he make the trip to Chicago 
more pleasant for others. 

The woman in the blanket, mentioned in a pre- 
vious lesson, was certainly dissatisfied with the 
appearance of her environment. 

She thereupon devised ways and means to 



104 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

eliminate a large part of that environment. A 
painter, sculptor, architect, reformer, of genius 
would have, on the other hand made that environ- 
ment more pleasant not only for himself but for 
others as well. 

Like the neurotic, the genius is egotistical. In 
the neurotic, egotism is a mask for a sense of in- 
feriority. In a genius it denotes confidence in 
one's aims and one's ability to realise those aims. 
Every genius starts in life with a slight sense of 
inferiority; but instead of using that inferiority as 
a convenient weapon wherewith to hold up the 
world, the genius compensates for that inferiority 
in ways which will make that inferiority harmless 
for the whole world. 

An inventor conscious of his inferiority, as far 
as bodily strength is concerned, creates a labor- 
saving device which enables him and all the other 
weak people to perform certain strenuous tasks 
without exhausting himself and without shirking 
any duty (for instance an electric washing ma- 
chine, an electric crane, etc.). 



GENIUS AND NEUROSIS 105 

The genius, like the neurotic, is inclined to with- 
draw from the world for periods of varying 
duration. 

Allowing many unimportant tho well-meaning 
people to fritter away our time in piffling conver- 
sation, card games, "parties," etc., is not condu- 
cive to creative work, nor to the concentration 
which creative work requires. 

But the genius withdraws from the world in 
order to do better work for the world. The neu- 
rotic withdraws into his blanket in order to revel 
in his own selfish thoughts, in his own morbid 
dreams. 

In other words, the neurotic is always selfish. 
The genius always unselfish. The world is better 
off for the geniuses who live in it and who leave 
it improved in several respects. The world is 
worse off for the neurotics who live in it and leave 
it deteriorated. 

The so-called normal people leave the world ex- 
actly as they found it. Hence we might state that 
the neurotic is negative, the so-called normal man 



106 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

neutral and subnormal, while the creative genius 
alone should claim the title of normal human be- 
ing, as he alone is positive and helps the human 
race in its upward striving. 



• LESSON XII 

Sex and Ego 

The early psychoanalysts, whose conclusions 
were based mainly upon their observation of hys- 
terical cases, accepted the theory of a purely 
sexual etiology of the neuroses ; that is, they con- 
tended that the neurosis was always traceable to 
a disturbance of the sexual life ; they even stated 
that no neurosis was possible when the sexual 
life was absolutely normal. 

Such an attitude was, of course, very one-sided. 
The general public, however, unfamiliar with the 
advance made in recent years in the field of psy- 
choanalytic research still believes that psychonaly- 
sis occupies itself mainly with details of the pa- 
tient's sexual life. 

It could not, of course, neglect such an import- 
ant factor, in certain cases, the only factor, but it 

pays much more attention, even in apparently 

107 



108 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

pure sexual cases, to another human craving, one 
which is infinitely more powerful than sex, the ego 
craving or ego urge. 

The ego urge is the force that drives us to 
secure food (more food, better food, easier food 
and hence power), which enables us to dominate 
other human beings and employ them directly 
or indirectly to minister to our needs. 

The ego urge is therefore a purely selfish crav- 
ing which strives to assure the survival of the in- 
dividual. It is only checked by the safety urge, 
the safety nerves (see frontispiece) when its 
exaggerated manifestations jeopardize individual 
survival. 

The sex urge is infinitely less selfish in its nor- 
mal aims. 

It strives to insure the reproduction of the spe- 
cies, and hence is essentially altruistic. A male 
must seek a female in order to procreate a third 
human being. 

The perversions, in which male seeks male or 
female seeks female or in which a lone male or a 
lone female satisfy their sexual cravings thru 



SEX AND EGO 109 

masturbation, are the result of the selfish ego 
urge interfering with the normal exercise of sex 
functions. 

This is why Wflhelm Stekel, a famous Austrian 
psychoanalyst, insists on designating homosexu- 
alism as the homosexual neurosis. 

I said in one of the preceding paragraphs that 
even apparently purely sexual cases cannot be 
understood unless we take into consideration the 
interference of selfish ego cravings with the nor- 
mal functions of the sex organs. One case from 
my practice will illustrate my meaning. 

An impotent patient planned one day to make 
advances to his stenographer who appeared to 
fancy him. He was to keep her after hours and 
in case she responded to his advances, he had 
planned to take her to the theater and to supper. 
Alone with her, he felt that he would probably 
be as impotent with her as he had been with other 
women and sent her home. 

Asked whether the incident had depressed him, 
or humiliated him much, he blushed and answered : 
-"No." Further questioning brought out the in- 



no LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

formation that the first idea to cross his mind 
when the girl left him was : "I have saved about 
twenty dollars." 

And he added: "I suppose that if I had not 
been impotent all my life I would not have $20,000 
in my name now." 

To this selfish type, potency meant lower resist- 
ance to temptation and the risk of sharing his 
pelf with a wife or mistress. 

Sex and love lose a good deal of their mystery 
when restudied from the psychoanalytic point of 
view. They lose none of their legitimate romance 
but they are no longer the frightening puzzles 
which, to the uninitiated, cause more anxiety 
than real joy. 

Sex attraction can be dissected easily into its 
component parts. 

Remember some of the weddings you have at- 
tended. Now and then the bride and bridegroom 
made up a really handsome couple, but, how many 
times did you say, or think, when they walked 
down the aisle : What can he see in her ? What 
can she see in him? 

1 



SEX AND EGO in 

You know that your handsome business part- 
ner is deeply in love with his barrel-like wife, and 
the beautiful Mrs. Brown thinks that her shrimp 
of a husband is Prince Charming reincarnate. 

Cynicism would not bring forth a fitting solu- 
tion for the problem, for in neither case did sor- 
did consideration influence them in the choice of 
a mate. 

Nor can we state for certainty that your part- 
ner and Mrs. Brown acquired such unlovely 
spouses to spare themselves the torments of jeal- 
ousy. Many neurotics are extremely jealous as 
they suffer from a feeling of inferiority and think 
that in competition with any other human being 
they are bound to meet defeat. 

Heiresses running away with chauffeurs, 
wealthy men marrying girls of shadowy reputa- 
tion, are very often neurotics who feel that they 
will dominate more completely their life mate if 
they select a person of inferior social status. 

But those are exceptions. Nor can we ex- 
plain the attraction of a homely man or woman by 
saying of the unprepossessing person : He is such 



ii2 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

a good fellow,, she is such a nice woman. We 
can like a fine fellow or a nice woman, but what 
makes us at times fall in love with and worship a 
person who is frankly homely to disinterested 
observers ? 

The first step in discussing love is to dissociate 
it from affection. We can feel greatly attached 
to a dog, a suit of comfortable clothes, an old 
faithful housekeeper. But we do not experience 
toward them the feeling which makes us unhappy 
unless we can see, take to our heart, pet and cher- 
ish a certain human being. It is only love which 
does that, love of a man for a woman, or a woman 
for a man. In order to study the love of the nor- 
mal human being, we must have a glimpse of the 
love life of abnormal people. For abnormal 
things are simply normal things which are a trifle 
exaggerated. For instance the deep thinker who 
can ignore reality for a while and devote all his 
mental energy to the solution of weighty problems 
is normal. The man who withdraws so complete- 
ly from reality that he no longer pays any atten- 
tion to his environment and is obsessed by one or 



SEX AND EGO 113 

two ideas for unusually long periods of time, has 
only gone a step farther, but he is insane. 

Insanity, or we should say rather the neurosis, 
is a magnifying 'glass which enables us to study 
normal people better, for it exaggerates their ac- 
tions as a microscope enlarges a small organism. 

In the neurotic, the choice of a mate is absolute- 
ly determined, positively or negatively, by the 
father or mother image. By which I mean that a 
neurotic man will never marry unless he finds a 
woman who in every essential respect is like his 
mother. Some, on the contrary, will never marry 
because every woman reminds them of their 
mother. The first case, however, is by far the 
most frequently met with. The same can be said 
also of female neurotics. To the female child 
the father image should be the ideal image of 
manhood with all the associations of strength that 
go with it. To the male child, the mother image 
should be the ideal image of womanhood, tender- 
ness, affection, etc. To the abnormal child that 
feminine or masculine ideal becomes an obsession 
which excludes any other ideal. After which 



H4 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

either that ideal is the only one worth attaining, 
or it is too high or too pure to be desecrated 
through physical association. 

Thus we find many old bachelors who live with 
their old mother, idolize her and believe that their 
aversion to marriage is due to their disinclina- 
tion to leave her lonely. They are generally blind 
to her shortcomings, physical or mental. Her taste 
is their standard of perfection, her opinion their 
norm of behavior. They will never marry until 
she dies. Woe then to the unfortunate woman 
who takes such a man as her husband, because an 
unusually good son is supposed to make a good 
life mate. He will nag her the rest of her life, 
comparing her constantly to his mother, and in 
a way which will not prove very flattering. 

That slightly neurotic type of a man, suffering 
from what psychoanalysts call the mother-fix- 
ation, marries a woman because he imagines he 
finds his mother's traits and characteristics in the 
bride of his choice; and he resents the fact that 
she is not an absolute duplicate of the mother 
image. 



SEX AND EGO 115 

The same applies to the girl with a father fix- 
ation, who adores her father and is often his con- 
stant companion. 

We have all met the young woman whom many 
people dub cynical because she shocks them by 
saying that she is forever falling in love with mar- 
ried men. She is not cynical. She is simply pur- 
sued by the father image and attracted by men 
who have in common with her father two char- 
acteristics : they are much older than she and they 
are married. 

Such is the love life of the neurotic. That of 
the normal men and women is ruled by the same 
laws, only instead of being obsessed by a type they 
are more attracted by that type than by any other 
type. 

If the average man will try to remember all the 
women who have attracted him, he will come to 
the conclusion that the attraction was weaker or 
stronger according to the degree of resemblance 
those women bore to the mother image. By re- 
semblance, I do not imply absolute similarity, 
mental or physical, but the possession of one or 



n6 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

more striking traits which impress themselves 
indelibly on the child's mind and which later 
dominate the thinking of the adult. 

I once had a patient who had a nervous break- 
down after an unfortunate entanglement with a 
married man. There had been another affair of 
the same sort in her life a few years before. I 
suspected a father fixation and asked her what 
the most distinctive traits of her father's appear- 
ance were, those which would strike an observer 
first. "His mouth and teeth and his powerful 
chest," she answered. The same question asked 
on other occasions about the other men elicited 
exactly the same answer. 

A positive indication can then be given to those 
trying to decide for themselves or for others 
about the opportunity of a certain match. 

What are the elements of the father or mother 
image which seem to have impressed us most? 
This is easily determined by a few questions an- 
swered without thinking, letting our unconscious 
mind speak unhampered. Then the problem is to 
find out whether the person who is to be selected 



SEX AND EGO 117 

as a life mate has all those traits, or at least a ma- 
jority of them. If he or she presents in his physi- 
cal and mental makeup many characteristics of 
the parent image, the attraction wielded by that 
person will be strong and lasting. In the other 
case, the attraction is not a vital one and may be 
built upon romance, prejudice, practical consid- 
erations, all elements which never make for a dur- 
able and happy union. 

It would also be a boon for both partners to 
know exactly what traits of theirs attracted the 
other. They could develop or retain that trait 
whenever possible. If a man was attracted to a 
woman because that woman had the graceful fig- 
ure, dark hair and intellectual habits of his 
mother, she must beware of growing stout, dyeing 
her hair red, or becoming more and more careless 
about her intellect. 

And if a man attracted a woman because he 
had white teeth, the swagger and the romantic 
allure of her father, how can he hope to attract 
her when he lets tobacco stain his teeth, and 
when he settles down mentally and physically? 



n8 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

Love is an art and a science, not a game of 
chance. Thousands of divorce actions would be 
avoided, if marriages were contracted with more 
regard for biological and psychological facts, and 
if the life partners did not cease soon after the 
wedding to exert themselves to attract each other. 
The old saying about the uselessness of throwing 
a bait after a fish is caught is silly indeed, for 
human fish do not remain caught and fresh bait 
has to be constantly dangled before their eyes. 



'LESSON XIII 
The Psychoanalytic Treatment 

Psychoanalysts do not attempt to treat every 
form of sickness. The psychoanalytic treatment 
should only be resorted to when family physicians, 
specialists, dentists, X-ray men, etc., have come 
to the conclusion that there is no physical cause 
for the patient's ailment. 

The conscientious analyst generally demands 
a statement to that effect from the patient's fam- 
ily physician and should insist on a blood and 
spinal fluid test and an X-ray photograph of the 
teeth. 

For I have seen cases of depression successfully 
cured by cathartics, and Dr. Cotton, of Trenton, 
has shown that a pus pocket or an impacted tooth 
may be responsible for serious nervous disorders. 

The psychoanalytic treatment is slow, expen- 
sive and discouraging. 

119 



120 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

The analyst must break down habits of 
thought which the patient may have developed 
in the course of many years, to which he is more 
or less reconciled and which, to a certain extent, 
provide him with absurd forms of satisfaction. 

He must by a thousand tests and constant cross- 
examination lead the patient to see his secret mo- 
tives and face his unconscious weaknesses. This 
takes time, months, in mild cases ; a year or more 
in severe cases. 

The intimate knowledge the analyst must have 
of his patient cannot be acquired in the touch- 
and-go, pulse, tongue-and-prescription method of 
the average physician. Each interview must last 
at least forty-five minutes. Each patient must 
therefore pay as much as all the patients a physi- 
cian would see in one hour. 

For weeks and sometimes for months, no appre- 
ciable betterment can be noticed in the patient's 
condition. For that matter, the change is at 
times so gradual that patients nearing recovery 
remark to the analyst : "I am not better but the 
attitude of my father (or mother or sister or asso- 



PSYCHOANALYTIC TREATMENT 121 

dates, as the case may be) has changed so com- 
pletely that life is much more enjoyable." 

The success of the treatment presupposes a 
great desire to get well on the part of the patient. 
The neurotic who is too attached to his neurosis 
and derives from it too many advantages, is not 
always willing to part with it. In certain cases 
financial arrangements must be made which com- 
pel the patient to come for treatment much as he 
would desire to interrupt his visits. 

,The unstable patient who is not willing or able 
to make a substantial advance payment is gener- 
ally bored after a few visits and stops the treat- 
ment, proclaiming everywhere that psychoanaly- 
sis has failed to cure him. 

Certain classes of patients cannot be treated. 

The paranoiac whom his family compels to 
seek help at the hands of an analyst soon comes 
to the conclusion that the analyst is insane or 
conspiring with his family to send him to an 
asylum. 

Homosexuals of the same sex as the analyst 
are dangerous patients who may have delusions 



122 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

about the analyst and gossip about the sexual ad- 
vances they imagine he has made to them. Male 
homosexuals should be treated by a woman, fe- 
male homosexuals by a man. Hysterical women 
should always be treated by a woman, provided 
they have no homosexual trend, for they will in- 
terpret every act of kindness on the part of a male 
analyst as a sexual advance; on the other hand, 
his professional coldness may cause them to get 
even with him by telling of an intimacy which does 
not exist. 

No hard and fast rule can be laid down as to 
the path which an analysis should follow. 

If a patient is unusually reticent or diffident, 
the word reaction test should be resorted to as 
soon as the general history of the case has been 
taken down. 

The following list of a hundred words is gen- 
erally used for those tests, but any one can pre- 
pare a different list to suit individual cases : 

Head, green, water, to sing, dead, long, ship, 
to pay, window, friendly, to cook, to ask, cold, 
stem, to dance, village, lake, sick, pride, table, 



PSYCHOANALYTIC TREATMENT 123 

ink, angry, needle, to swim, voyage, blue, lamp, 
to sin, bread, rich, tree, to prick, pity, yellow, 
mountain, to die, salt, new, custom, to pray, 
money, foolish, pamphlet, despise, finger, expen- 
sive, bird, to fall, book, unjust, frog, to part, hun- 
ger, white, child, to take care, pencil, sad, plum, 
marry, house, dear, glass, quarrel, fur, big, car- 
rot, paint, organ, old, flower, to beat, box, wild, 
family, to wash, cow,, friend, luck, lie, behavior, 
narrow, brother, to fear, stork, false, anxiety, to 
kiss, bride, pure, door, to choose, hay, contented, 
ridicule, to sleep, month, nice, woman, to abuse. 

The patient, eyes closed, gives to the analyst the 
very first thought that occurs to him as soon as 
one of those key words is uttered. 

Embarrassing associations are spoken more 
slowly than pleasant or indifferent ones. When 
the patient is unable to bring forth any associa- 
tion, the analyst knows that the key word is con- 
nected with some unpleasant, painful or humili- 
ating memory, with a complex. 

When the same answer is repeated several 



124 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

times, that word or phrase is closely connected 
with the patient's trouble. 

The mere manner in which the answers are 
given offers to the analyst valuable clues to the 
patient's modes of thinking. 

The patient should be asked to bring every day 
a written account of his dreams. 

The associations brought forth by those dreams 
will awaken memories of all sorts of past inci- 
dents. 

Those incidents should be, if the patient spends 
much time in the analyst's office, told in detail, 
if the patient only calls a few times a week, de- 
scribed in writing between office calls. The pa- 
tient's biography should be reconstituted piece- 
meal and all childhood incidents properly inter- 
preted. 

In other words, nothing which may enable the 
patient to see himself as he is and to trace back 
to his chilhood the habits of thought which have 
made his life inadapted to his environment should 
ever be neglected. For I repeat, the analytic 
treatment is not so much a treatment as a thoro 



PSYCHOANALYTIC TREATMENT 125 

course in self-discovery enabling the patient to 
gradually realise the actual meaning of his actions 
and the goal he has all his life pursued uncon- 
sciously. • 

No attempt should be made by the analyst at 
changing the personality of his patient. I have 
been asked many times whether an artist, for in- 
stance, would still be an artist after submitting 
himself to psychoanalysis. Floyd Dell, the au- 
thor of Moon Calf has answered that question by 
saying that only analysis enabled him to make the 
self-revelations which fill that interesting novel. 

The analyst never tries to superimpose a new 
personality over the old, nor to shape his patient 
after his own image. Such results, if attained, 
would be only the temporary consequence of sug- 
gestion and would serve no purpose. 

Any personality can live at peace with reality, 
provided it is not forced into absurd behavior by 
unconscious factors. 

Analysis resolves itself into a readaptation of 
the patient to reality, sometimes thru a change of 



126 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

occupation or environment rather than into a 
modification of the patient's personality. 

An extreme egotist with a craving for motion 
would be happier driving a taxicab than sitting 
in an office under the supervision of some chief 
clerk. 

An exhibitionistic woman could gratify all her 
cravings by indulging in Greek dancing, taking 
part in theatricals, etc. 

A masochist, constantly seeking suffering, 
could make a splendid nurse. 

A sadist would wield harmlessly a butcher's 
knife or a surgeon's scalpel, etc. 

The many neurotic women who waste their life 
on lonely farms would probably be happy and 
healthy in a busy metropolis, etc. 

In many cases I have found it very good for 
some of my more intelligent and cultured patients 
to start analysing some mild case of neurosis ob- 
served among their acquaintance. 

We see thru others more quickly than we see 
thru ourselves and unsnarling some one else's 
mental kinks is a liberal education for ourselves. 



PSYCHOANALYTIC TREATMENT 127 

It goes without saying that a patient who is 
fairly conversant with psychoanalysis and who 
devotes much time to the study of psychoanalytic 
books acquires insnght more quickly than a patient 
who has to be guided at every step in his voyage 
of self -exploration. 

Many analysts object to this procedure and in- 
sist that all psychoanalytical information ab- 
sorbed by their patients should proceed from 
them exclusively. They may be unconsciously 
moved by an egotistical desire to control too com- 
pletely their patients' thinking or a practical de- 
sire to prolong the analysis. 

The successful analysis being one which pro- 
ceeds at a quick pace, leading the patient from 
discovery to discovery with as few dull moments 
as possible, one can see that analysis supplemented 
by copious reading is likely to be less of a drag 
on the patient's mental and financial endurance. 

In too many cases, financial considerations in- 
fluence the course of the analysis and the patient's 
burdens should not be made heavier than neces- 
sary by spending hours telling the patient simple 



128 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

facts he could read at his leisure in an inexpensive 
book. Patients who cannot bear the expense of 
analysis should apply for treatment at St. Eliza- 
beth's Hospital, Washington, D. C, the only insti- 
tution in this country where neurotics are treated 
according to the psychoanalytic method by a staff 
of physicians and laymen of the highest standing. 



LESSON XIV 
A Psychoanalytic Who's Who 

Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, 
was born in Freiberg, Austria, in 1856. He stud- 
ied medicine at the University of Vienna and 
his first position was that of demonstrator at the 
Vienna Physiological Institute. He then was 
appointed house physician at the General Hospi- 
tal. In 1885, he became instructor in medicine 
at his Alma Mater. That year he left for Paris 
to study nervous diseases under Charcot. In 1902 
he was appointed assistant professor. 

On his return to Vienna, he did research work 
in hysteria under the direction of an older man, 
Dr. Joseph Breuer. Breuer, more conservative 
than Freud, refused to follow him along the paths 
which their observations were blazing. 

In 1909, Freud visited the United States at the 

invitation of Stanley Hall and delivered a series 

129 



130 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

of lectures at Clark University, Worcester, Mass. 
On that occasion he was awarded the honorary 
degree of LL.D., which always follows his name 
in translations of his works. 

The essential points of the Freudian doctrines, 
which is accepted in its entirety by only a small 
minority of analysts, are as follows : 

Mental disease is the bursting forth of erotic 
wishes repressed in childhood. Erotic impulses 
manifest themselves long before childhood, in fact 
from the very time of birth. They do not arise 
from the genital region alone, but from all the ero- 
genous parts of the body, that is, all the parts able 
to experience pleasure, the skin, the mouth, the 
rectum, etc. 

In infancy, erotic impulses have no object out- 
side of the body. The child is autoerotic, that is, 
gives himself pleasurable sensations, for instance, 
by sucking his thumb (which gratifies thumb and 
mouth). Later he loves an object like himself 
(homosexualism), then other beings of both sexes 
(bisexualism). After puberty, his preferences be- 



PSYCHOANALYTIC WHO'S WHO 131 

come heterosexual, that is, male seeks female, fe- 
male seeks male. Incomplete development at any 
stage of that development may cause later re- 
gression to that state. 

In their object choice, boys favor the mother, 
girls the father. When that preference is exag- 
gerated it becomes a fixation which has as one of 
its consequences hatred on the part of the child 
for the parent of the same sex. This is designated 
as the Oedipus situation or the Oedipus complex, 
in the case of boys, the Electra complex in the 
case of girls. This is the central complex of the 
neurosis. 

The neurosis is an escape from reality by way 
of a regression to a lower grade of erotic devel- 
opment. 

The psychoanalytic cure consists in letting the 
patient talk freely and in helping him to bring to 
consciousness his repressed unconscious cravings 
which become harmless as soon as the patient 
realizes their meaning. The process is helped 
along by a phenomenon called the transference or 
attachment of the patient for the analyst. 



132 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

... 

The patient who has acquired enough insight 

into his unconscious can then sublimate, that is, 
gratify in socially acceptable ways, which are 
not erotic or sexual in their nature, the uncon- 
scious cravings which he has always repressed 
and which have made him a neurotic. 

This reduction of every mainspring of human 
activity to the sexual libido aroused a great deal 
of opposition from the very first. Both Dr. Carl 
Jung, of Zurich, and Dr. Alfred Adler, of Vienna, 
while accepting the psychoanalytic point of view 
which I sketched in the first lesson, disagree en- 
tirely with Dr. Freud on that point. 

Dr. Jung refuses to consider every form of 
pleasure as a sexual manifestation. The libido, 
to him, is bigger than the sex urge. It is the vital 
urge,, the life urge itself. 

The influence of the parents on the offspring, 
Jung thinks, is a much more important factor of 
normality or abnormality than the child's erotic 
development. But it is not so much the actual 
parents as "the father image" and (C the mother 
image," distorted or idealised by the child which 



PSYCHOANALYTIC WHO'S WHO 133 

moulds the child's mind. The parents are not the 
object of the child's sexual desire, but a symbol 
of safety, comfort, affection. To be normal, the 
child must at puberty, renounce all that, and go 
thru the stage of self-sacrifice. 

To Jung, dreams are not so much the fulfill- 
ment of wishes as they are a true picture of the 
situation as viewed unconsciously by the patient. 

Nor are repressed childhood cravings the actu- 
al cause of the neurose. The neurose is due to 
the fact that the patient finds himself in a con- 
flict which he is trying not to solve for himself. 

The analysis is not, therefore, a reduction of 
morbid phenomena to childish erotic cravings 
but a high moral task of immense educational 
value. 

The patient must be led to seek a solution of 
his conflicts on a higher plane where primitive 
cravings and ethical duties no longer clash. 

Morality, however, is a varying element and 
hence the patient must develop a new faith that 
will give expression to all his finer aspirations. 

Instead of placing the emphasis on the past as 



134 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

Freud does, Jung places the emphasis on the pres- 
ent. The reader can readily see how the two view- 
points can be reconciled. 

In certain cases frankly erotic cravings pre- 
dominate,, in others, cravings are of a different 
character. In certain cases, it is the symbolic 
image of the parents which dominates the child's 
thinking, in other cases, there may be actual in- 
cestuous influences at work. Every "Freudian" 
case is bound to present many "Jungian" aspects 
and vice versa. 

But even a combination of the Freudian and 
the Jungian theories would still leave many phe- 
nomena unexplained. The childishness and re- 
gressive tendencies of the neurotic are fully ac- 
counted for by them, but the neurotic's aggressive 
traits require a more searching interpretation. 

Furthermore, both Freud and Jung appear 
rather superficial to the modern scientist who is 
compelled to discard the traditional distinction 
between the mind and the body. 

How is it that a mental distortion can produce 
thru the phenomenon called by Freud conversion, 



PSYCHOANALYTIC WHO'S WHO 135 

a physical symptom, paralysis, blindness, vomit- 
ing, etc. ? Freud and Jung leave this question un- 
answered. 

Adler links' more closely mental and physical 
phenomena thru his theory of organ inferiority 
and compensation. 

Adler does not favor the term psychoanalysis 
and prefers to speak of individual psychology. 

While Freud considers the libido as a striving 
toward pleasure, and Jung as the life force itself, 
Adler says that all human activities and effort 
tend toward a goal which is the completeness of 
existence and function. 

Nature is constantly trying to compensate 
whatever incompleteness is found in the organ- 
ism. After removal of one kidney, for instance, 
the other grows larger and does the work of 
two, etc. The neurotic is a being who feels in 
some way inferior and is trying to compensate in 
abnormal ways for that inferiority and incom- 
pleteness. 

The neurotic views the world as made up of 
some people who are above and others who are 



136 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

below. His safety demands that he shall be above. 
To that antithesis he soon adds another one: 
masculine and feminine. 

Male or female, the neurotic wishes to be a 
complete man for to his mind masculine means 
superior. 

The morbid infantilism of neurotic sexuality is 
not due to the emerging of old repressions. It 
is being dragged into the neurotic picture by the 
neurotic who finds in it a convenient weapon and 
excuse for unsocial demeanor. 

The neurosis, to Adler, is a morbid life plan 
Freud stressed the past, Jung the present. Adler 
stressed the future. 

The essential aim of the Adlerian treatment is 
to lead the neurotic back to social ways and to 
inject into him the community sense he lacks, 
after interpreting his unsocial ways as forms of 
attempted aggression. 

With Dr. Edward J. Kempf of New York City, 
we reach a neurological view of the personality 
which clears off all the mysteries of the uncon- 
scious and substitutes a purely medical vocabulary 



PSYCHOANALYTIC WHO'S WHO 137 

for the complicated and romantic explanations of 
the first analysts. 

Kempf considers that emotions are due to ten- 
sions assumed by certain parts of the autonomic 
system (see Lesson IV). 

Any exaggerated craving, sex, ego, fear, ha- 
tred, hunger, etc., may be the cause of a neurosis 
if our environment compels us to repress that 
craving too completely. 

The treatment according to Kempf consists in 
developing a transference, that is, the unlimited 
confidence of the patient in the analyst whereby 
the patient is enable to recognise consciously and 
without fear all his tabooed cravings. 

When the patient is able to accept those crav- 
ings as a part of his personality he is then free 
from fear and able to readjust himself to his 
environment. 

The best known American analysts are: 

In New York City: Dr. A. A. Brill, translator 
of Freud's work; Dr. Beatrice Hinckle, translator 
and annotator of Jung's works; Dr. Smith Ely 
Jelliffe, Editor of the "Psychoanalytic Review"; 



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138 LESSONS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 

Dr. E. J. Kempf, author of "Psychopathology" ; 
Dr. H. W. Frink, author of "Morbid Fears and 
Compulsions"; Dr. Bernard Glueck, translator 
of Adler's "Neurotic Constitution" ; Dr. David 
O. Edson, author of "Getting What We Want"; 
Dr. Gregory Stragnell, editor of the New York 
Medical Journal; Dr. Elizabeth Severn, author 
of "Psychology and Behavior." 

In Washington, D. C. : Dr. William White, 
author of "Elements of Character Formation," 
"Mental Hygiene," etc.; Dr. Lucille Dooley and 
Dr. E. Lazelle, contributors to the Psychoana- 
lytic Review. Dr. Lazelle has delivered lectures 
on psychoanalysis before groups of insane peo- 
ple at St. Elizabeth's Hospital with excellent 
therapeutic results. 

In Bridgeport, Conn., Dr. S. L. Katzoff". 

In Boston, Dr. I. Coriat, author of "Repressed 
Emotions." 

In Chicago, Dr. Ralph C. Hamill. 

In St. Paul, Minn., Dr. Charles R. Ball. 

In Portland, Oregon, Dr. Virgil MacMickle. 

In Pasadena, Cal., Dr. Josephine A. Jackson 



PSYCHOANALYTIC WHO'S WHO 139 

and Helen M. Salisbury, authors of "Outwitting 
Our Nerves." 

The psychoanalytic treatment is applied at St. 
Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, D. C, 
which is directed by Dr. William White. Psy- 
choanalysis of the Freudian school is taught at 
New York University by Dr. Brill and modern 
psychoanalysis is taught at Dartmouth College 
where Tridon's "Psychoanalysis" is used as a 
text book. 



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